“What!” cried the horrified Solange. “That his health was due to his uncleanliness? But that is absurd!”
“Which it would seem so, ma’am, but there ain’t no gettin’ round the proof. We all doubts it, just like you do. So we ups and hog ties the old natural, picks him up with a pair of tongs and dips him in the crick. Which he simply lets out one bloodcurdlin’ yell of despair and passes out immediate.”
“Mon Dieu!” said Solange, fervently. “Quels farceurs!” 178
“Yes’m,” they agreed, politely.
Then Solange laughed and they broke into sympathetic grins, even the solemn Sucatash showing his teeth in enjoyment as he heard her tinkling mirth with its bell-like note.
Then they forgot the squatting figure by its camp fire and drove on to the ranch.
This turned out to be a straggling adobe house, shaded by cottonwoods and built around three sides of a square. It was roomy, cool, and comfortable, with a picturesqueness all its own. To Solange, it was inviting and homelike, much more so than the rather cold luxury of hotels and Pullman staterooms. And this feeling of homeliness was enhanced when she was smilingly and cordially welcomed by a big, gray-bearded, bronzed man and a white-haired, motherly woman, the parents of young Sucatash.
The self-contained, self-reliant young woman almost broke down when Mrs. Wallace took her in charge and hurried her to her room. They seemed to know all about her and to take her arrival as an ordinary occurrence and a very welcome one. Sucatash, of course, was responsible for their knowledge, having telephoned them before they had started.
Before Solange reappeared ready for supper, Sucatash and Dave had explained all that they knew of the affair to Wallace. He was much interested but very dubious about it all.
“Of course, she’ll not be going into the mountains 179 at this time o’ year,” he declared. “It ain’t more than a week before the snow’s bound to fly, and the Esmeraldas ain’t no place for girls in the winter time. I reckon that feller you-all helped get out o’ jail and that I planted hosses for won’t more than make it across the range before the road’s closed. I hope it wasn’t nothin’ serious he was in for, son.”