California -- Fiction; Western stories; Women pioneers -- Fiction
“Good!” cried the Girl, delightedly, as she spied them. The next instant
she was busily engaged in arranging them in her hair, pausing only to
take a pistol out of her pocket, which she laid on the edge of the
bureau. “No offence, Wowkle,” she went on thoughtfully, a moment later,
“but I want you to put your best foot forward when you’re waitin’ on
table to-night. This here company o’ mine’s a man o’ idees. Oh, he knows
everythin’! Sort of a damme style.”
Wowkle gave no sign of having heard her mistress’ words, but kept right
on tidying the room. Now she went over to the cupboard and took down two
cups, which she placed on the fireplace base. It was while she was in
the act of laying down the last one that the Girl broke in suddenly upon
her thoughts with:
“Say, Wowkle, did Billy Jackrabbit really propose to you?”
“Yep--get marry,” spoke up Jackrabbit’s promised wife without looking
up.
For some moments the Girl continued to fumble among her possessions in
the bureau drawer; at last she brought forth an orange-coloured satin
ribbon, which she placed in the Indian woman’s hands with her prettiest
smile, saying:
“Here, Wowkle, you can have that to fix up for the weddin’.”
Wowkle’s eyes glowed with appreciation.
“Huh!” she ejaculated, and proceeded to wind the ribbon about the beads
around her neck.
Turning once more to the bureau, the Girl took out a small parcel done
up in tissue paper and began to unwrap it.
“I’m goin’ to put on them, if I can git ’em on,” she said, displaying a
pair of white satin slippers. The next instant she had plumped herself
down upon the floor and was trying to encase her feet in a pair of
slippers which were much too small for them. “Remember what fun I made
o’ you when you took up with Billy Jackrabbit?” suddenly she asked with
a happy little smile. “What for? sez I. Well, p’r’aps you was right.
P’r’aps it’s nice to have someone you really care for--who belongs to
you. P’r’aps they ain’t so much in the saloon business for a woman after
all, and you don’t know what livin’ really is until--” She stopped
abruptly and threw upon the floor the slipper that refused to give to
her foot. “Oh, Wowkle,” she went on, taking up the other slipper, “it’s
nice to have someone you can talk to, someone you can turn your heart
inside out to.”
At last she had succeeded in getting into one slipper and, rising, tried
to stand in it; but it hurt her so frightfully that she immediately sank
down upon the floor and proceeded to pat and rub and coddle her foot to
ease the pain. It was while she was thus engaged that a knock came upon
her cabin door.
“Oh, Lord, here he is!” she cried, panic-stricken, and began to drag
herself hurriedly across the room with the intention of concealing
herself behind the curtain at the foot of the bed; while Wowkle, with
unusual celerity, made for the fireplace, where she stood with her back
to the door, gazing into the fire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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