American essays; Short stories, American; Western stories
Later in the day, when the father and the brother were with the man at
the corral, the aunt with her station-keeper, and Sis thoughtfully kept
employed by her mother, Dora found a chance to steal out to the wagon,
where George was waiting for her. From under the wagon sheet he drew two
or three bundles, which, on being opened, contained what Dora thought
the finest display of dry-goods she had ever seen. Lost in admiration,
her face suddenly fell, and a queer, unexplained sense of something
painful or humiliating jarred on her feelings when several pairs of
ladies' shoes and numerous pairs of stockings made their appearance from
out of one of the bundles. She drew back, hurt and abashed, and when
George asked--
"But, Dora, don't you like your finery? I thought you liked pink. Isn't
this dress pretty?"
She answered confusedly, "I--I didn't know they were for me--and
besides--I can't take them. I know I am a poor--ignorant girl--but--" a
sob finished the sentence as she turned to go to the house.
But she did not go. I don't know what George W. said to her while he
held her close to him. It was something about his right to buy finery
for his little wife, and the like nonsense, which Dora did not repeat to
Sis when she presented to her a dress of the brightest possible scarlet.
That night they all sat out under the trees together. There was no more
reserve or secrecy maintained. A dozen papers of the choicest brands of
tobacco and half a dozen bottles of "Colorado river water," from Fort
Yuma, had wonderfully mollified the stepfather. The mother would have
been happy, even without the indigo-blue dress that fell to her share,
and Buddy was radiant in new suspenders and a white store shirt. As soon
as possible a Justice of the Peace was imported from Arizona City, to
which place he was faithfully returned, after having made two happy
couples at Gila Bend.
Many months after, on my way back from Tucson, we came quite
unexpectedly, between the latter place and Sacaton, on a new shanty. It
was built of unhewn logs of cottonwood and mesquite trees, the branches,
with their withered foliage, furnishing the roof. A certain cheerful,
home-like air about the place made me surmise the presence of a woman.
I was not mistaken; for though the only door of the hut was closed, and
I could see no window, a loud but pleasant treble voice rang out
directly: "Dad! Bud! come right h'yere to me. I know that's her comin'
thar--I jist know it is," and a little lithe body rushed out of the door
and up to the ambulance, as though she meant to take wagon, mules, and
all by storm. A rough-looking man came slowly from behind the house, and
Bud, with a selection of dogs at his heels, clambered over a piece of
fence--merely for the sake of climbing, as there was plenty of open
space to cross.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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