Arizona -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Religious fiction; Teachers -- Fiction
The men stirred about, donned their coats, furtively brushing their
hair, and Long Bill insisted that Mom Wallis put on her new bonnet;
which she obligingly did, and sat down carefully in the barrel-chair,
her hands neatly crossed in her lap, supremely happy. It really was
wonderful what a difference that bonnet made in Mom Wallis.
Gardley arranged a comfortable seat for Margaret at the table and put in
front of her one of the hymn-books she had brought. Then, after she was
seated, he took the chair beside her and brought out the little
Testament from his breast-pocket, gravely laying it on the hymn-book.
Margaret met his eyes with a look of quick appreciation. It was
wonderful the way these two were growing to understand each other. It
gave the girl a thrill of wonder and delight to have him do this simple
little thing for her, and the smile that passed between them was
beautiful to see. Long Bill turned away his head and looked out of the
window with an improvised sneeze to excuse the sudden mist that came
into his eyes.
Margaret chose "My Faith looks up to Thee" for the first hymn, because
Fiddling Boss could play it, and while he was tuning up his fiddle she
hastily wrote out two more copies of the words. And so the queer service
started with a quaver of the old fiddle and the clear, sweet voices of
Margaret and Gardley leading off, while the men growled on their way
behind, and Mom Wallis, in her new gray bonnet, with her hair all
fluffed softly gray under it, sat with eyes shining like a girl's.
So absorbed in the song were they all that they failed to hear the sound
of a horse coming into the clearing. But just as the last words of the
final verse died away the door of the bunk-house swung open, and there
in the doorway stood Pop Wallis!
The men sprang to their feet with one accord, ominous frowns on their
brows, and poor old Mom Wallis sat petrified where she was, the smile of
relaxation frozen on her face, a look of fear growing in her tired old
eyes.
Now Pop Wallis, through an unusual combination of circumstances, had
been for some hours without liquor and was comparatively sober. He stood
for a moment staring amazedly at the group around his fireside. Perhaps
because he had been so long without his usual stimulant his mind was
weakened and things appeared as a strange vision to him. At any rate, he
stood and stared, and as he looked from one to another of the men, at
the beautiful stranger, and across to the strangely unfamiliar face of
his wife in her new bonnet, his eyes took on a frightened look. He
slowly took his hand from the door-frame and passed it over his eyes,
then looked again, from one to another, and back to his glorified wife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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