Then there had been the last lecture, when Mr. God gave them a little
talk on the aims of the company and ended his address with a delicate
plea for—well, for what? Sobriety and morality, probably. What he said
was, “I need hardly add that we assume that every girl is a _lady_, in
the best sense of the word....”
They had giggled at that, all the way back to the apartment. It _was_
fun, the whole idea; tearing over the countryside all day and not
knowing every evening where you would be the next night. Flo was tired,
that was all: it would pass——
“We might cut up tonight,” she said aloud. “There’s a new movie isn’t
there? Or would you like to hire a car and go out of town somewhere?
Come on, let’s do that.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Flo grumbled. “It costs too much. I don’t know if
I’ll last till next pay day as it is. I tell you, though, we might get
dressed up and eat at the hotel instead of fixing something here.”
“Yes, that wouldn’t be bad. Is there any hot water? Oh, wait a minute.”
The phone was ringing: she ran to answer it and called back, “Flo, it’s
Tom and he says it’s going to be moonlight. He and Wally want us to go
up the canyon for a picnic. Should I tell him we’ll fix the supper?”
Flo frowned, as usual, and protested. “But there’s nothing in the
house....”
“Now, don’t be that way. We can send for something. It’ll do us good.
Come on.”
“Oh, all right. Who’s going?”
“Just us and the cowboys. Tom says he can have the horses here by seven.
Hurry and make up your mind, he’s waiting.”
“It’s all right with me.” She hesitated, struggling with her woe, then
hurried into the kitchen and started to slice bread.
They were well on the way by the time the moon appeared over a dip in
the range of hills to the east. The night air was warm; in the moonlit
darkness their shadows were grotesquely different in size. Tom’s hat was
the largest thing about him; it swept in a beautiful curve above his
sharp face. He rode ahead of the others, glancing around to talk to Flo,
who followed stiff and a little ill at ease in the saddle, perpetually
thinking and talking of her horse. Gin and Wally rode side by side, but
Wally was immense and the horse he rode was also immense: when Gin said
anything to him she had to look up. She didn’t say much: Wally was in a
reminiscent mood and kept the conversation going without any help.
“I mind at one of the shows at Cheyenne,” he said, “the judges was just
beginning to catch on the wild cow milking trick. I won out because they
caught everybody else.”
“What is the trick? I never heard of it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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