“Up in the Mormon country, I met two Mormon girls, only I didn’t know what they was, and was cussin’ the Mormons and what I thought of them, when one of them ast me what I thought of Mormon girls, so then I caught on. So I expressed a little of what I thought of them, an’ we got on fine. She ast me to a dance, an’ I said I’d go if I could ride back to my bed in time to get my other pants. But it was a day’s trip, an’ I couldn’t make it. I meant to go back later, to ask some questions of her,—personal ones, I mean,—” he took time to hit the cactus blossom squarely,—“relating to matrimony, if you know what I mean. But I never did get to go back.”
Now like most men, the westerner recognizes two kinds of women, but with this distinction;—he permits her to classify herself while he respects her classification. The Merry One seemed to be leading up to a natural transition.
“I don’t know nothin’ about love. Jest kinder cold, I am, like a stone.” He snickered softly.
“Truly?” said Toby, innocently interested. “Why is that?”
He shied a pebble at the long-suffering cactus.
“Jest my nature, I reckon. My French blood. Didn’t you know all Frenchmen was marble-hearted?”
Tucson beamed slowly, like a benevolent minister of the gospel.
“Toby,” I said, “you have yawned twice in the last five minutes.”
Toby never needs to hear the word bed repeated. She got to her feet, sleepily.
“We can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done today,” I went on in a cordial way. “All through the west we have met with the greatest help and courtesy. People ask us if we’re afraid to travel alone, but we always tell them not when we are among westerners.”