With a cloud of fury on her face she whirled, and whisked into the house.
"Come on, Alf," old Wrinkle advised, with a look of amusement in his eyes. "Let 'er sweat it out alone. She's jest tryin' to work on you, anyway. She'll be as smooth as goose-grease by night. Looky here, Alf, I'm an old man, an' you are jest a boy by comparison," he went on, as they walked down the road together, "but what I don't know about women you don't know about hosses, and you know a lot. I've learned women inch by inch all through life. I reckon I got on to it by lyin' around the fire on cold or wet days and listenin' to 'em. They say some men make a study of rocks, ores, plants, an' bugs, but my hobby always was females. Why, I almost know what turn a baby gal will take when it grows up. It was a sort of funny game with me. I set out to see if I'd ever see a woman do or say a sensible thing, an' I hain't won yet. Now, you may not know it, my boy, but you are in hot water, an' it is deep enough to float yore whiskers. You had married life down about right till just a few days ago. You could go and come whenever you liked an' nobody axed any questions. You was about the freest married man I ever knowed, white or black, yaller or red, but yore day of reckoning has come. I knowed some'n was wrong last night when you an' Het had that powwow in the yard, an' I knowed the sun was shinin' too bright this mornin' to do yore crop any good except to burn it up. I know Het. I've watched her bury one man an' start in with another, an' if you had been a worryin' feller she'd have had you mouldin' in the ground long go. As long as Hettie could worry you she was happy. Part of that grave-rock celebration was because she 'lowed it bothered you. I couldn't help hearin' the talk last night. You both spoke louder than you thought, an' the wind was blowin' my way. Why, man, when you set thar last night an' told that woman that her undyin' love for Dick was holy an' godly an' a thing to be kept in a glass case an' looked at every hour in the day—I say when you throwed all that guff at her you sealed yore doom. Them words kicked every prop from under her, an' down she come with a flop that knocked the breath out of all her calculations. She looks fresh and rosy this morning, but she rolled and tumbled the most of the night. I don't sleep sound, an' I heard her. I wondered what step she'd take, an' the breakfast-table grins an' rose-bud and buggy-ride proposition showed her hand. This mad spell is part of the game. She has set in to make you do your courtin' over ag'in, an' you'll find that about as unnatural as wearin' yore vest under yore shirt. No man can court the same woman twice an' put his heart in the job, but a woman is just so constituted that she could have it done over an' over by one or a dozen men. I reckon, as Scriptur' says, it is more blessed to give than to receive, but a man 'u'd rather not be blessed in the time to come than to have to make eyes an' say sweet things when he ain't feelin' jest right. Now, I'll turn back; I jest walked out with you to give you what advice I could. Git the bit in yore jaw an' pull yore way steady, an' after a while she'll git tired an' quit naggin' you."
That morning, near noon, as Henley was busy at his work in the rear of the store, Cahews came back to him with a mild look of surprise on his face.
"Your wife is out in front in her uncle Ben's carriage," he announced. "She's dressed for travel—got three or four valises in with her. Warren, must have sent over after her; the team looks like it's been on the go for several hours."
Henley found her in the luxurious seat behind the higher one on which the colored driver, in a battered silk top-hat, sat holding the reins over a handsome pair of blacks. She looked at him coldly as, hatless and coatless, he hurried out to her.
"What's this?" he asked, half playfully. "You ain't going to vamoose the ranch, are you?"
"Uncle Ben's sick," she answered, stiffly. "He sent a note by Ned. He didn't say for me to come, but he hinted at it several times. I'd show you what he wrote, but we haven't time to spare. I packed up as quick as I could. We'll stop at the half-way house for dinner."
"Ben hain't dangerous, is he?" Henley asked, his foot on the brass-tipped hub of the fore-wheel, his hand on the arm of the seat she occupied.
"I don't know whether he is or not," the speaker pulled down the veil under her hat-brim and avoided her husband's eyes, "but he's lonely and heartbroken over the way that unprincipled woman has treated him, and he needs petting and nursing and some company in that big, gloomy house to take his mind off his trouble and humiliation."
"He ought never to have got mixed up with her." Henley was recalling Wrinkle's sage remarks. "Dealing with a woman you've known all her life is risky enough, without going as far as Ben did for an opportunity to get slapped in the face. But he ought to be thankful he found her out in time."