"Well, I knew a woman who went just that way. Had that same flabby, funny
look--and that same distress after eatin', I told her this mornin' she'd
better go up to Sulphur and see that new doctor. You see, yore ma has
always been a reckless kind of a critter--more like a man than a woman,
God knows--an' how she ever got a girl like you I don't fairly understand.
I reckon you must be what the breedin' men call 'a throw-back,' for yore
pa wa'n't much to brag of, 'ceptin' for looks--he certainly was
good-lookin'. He used to sober down when he got where you was; but
my--good God!--weren't they a pair to draw to? I've heard 'Lando tell
tales of yore ma's doin's that would 'fright ye. Not that she fooled with
men," she hastened to say. "Lord, no! For her the sun rose and set in Ed
Wetherford. She'd leave you any day, and go on the round-up with him. It
nigh about broke her up in business when Ed hit the far-away trail."
The girl perceived that in her visitor she had one of these self-oiled
human talking-machines "with tongue hung in the middle," as the old saying
goes, and she was dimly conscious of having heard her many times before.
"You don't look very well yourself," she said.
"Me? Oh, I'm like one o' these Injun dawgs--can't kill me. I've been on
the range so long I'm tough as dried beef. It's a fierce old place for a
woman--or it was before 'the war'--since then it's kind o' softened down a
hair."
"What do you mean by 'the war'?"
"Why, you remember the rustler war? We date everything out here from that
year. You was here, for I saw ye--a slob of a child."
"Oh!" exclaimed Virginia. "I understand now. Yes, I was here. I saw my
father at the head of the cowboys."
"They weren't cowboys; they were hired killers from Texas. That's what let
yore pa out o' the State. He were on the wrong side, and if it hadn't 'a'
been for the regular soldiers he'd 'a' been wiped out right hyer. As it
was he had to skip the range, and hain't never been back. I don't s'pose
folks will lay it up agin you--bein' a girl--but they couldn't no _son_ of
Ed Wetherford come back here and settle, not for a minute. Why, yore ma
has had to bluff the whole county a'most--not that _I_ lay anything up
agin her. I tell folks she was that bewitched with Ed she couldn't see
things any way but his way. She fought to save his ranch and stawk
and--but hell! she couldn't do nothin'--and then to have him go back on
her the way he did--slip out 'twixt two days, and never write; that just
about shot her to pieces. I never could understand that in Ed, he 'peared
so mortally fond of you and of her, too. He sure was fond of you!" She
shook her head. "No, can't anybody make me believe Ed Wetherford is
alive."