Me Smith

Smith replied with cool impudence, as he looked her over in much the same manner as he would have eyed a heifer on the range. “I was whipped for working when I was a boy, and I’ve always remembered.”
    “It must be quite a ride—from the brush back there in Missouri where you was drug up.”
    “I ranges on the Sundown slope,” he replied shortly.
    “They have sheep-camps over there, then?”
    Again the slurring insinuation pricked him.
    “Oh, I can twist a rope and ride a horse fast enough to keep warm.”
    “So?”—the inflection was tantalizing. “Was that horse gentled for your grandmother?”
    He eyed her angrily, but checked the reply on his tongue.
    “Say, girl, can you tell me where I can find that fat Injun woman’s tepee who lives around here?”
    “You mean my mother?”
    He looked at her with new interest.
    “Does she live in a log cabin on a crick?”
    “She did about an hour ago.”
    “Is your mother a widder?”
    “Lookin’ for widders?”
    “I likes widders. It happens frequent that widders are sociable inclined—especially if they are hard up,” he added insolently.
    “Oh, you’re ridin’ the grub-line?” Her insolence equalled his own.
    “Not yet;” and he took from his pocket a thick roll of banknotes.
    “Blood money? Some sheep-herder’s month’s pay, I guess.”
    “You’re a good guesser.”
    “Not very—you’re easy.”
    The girl’s dislike for Smith was as unreasoning and violent as was her liking for the excitable little man whom she had helped up the hill, and whose wagon was now rumbling close at her horse’s heels.
    They all travelled together in silence until, after a mile and a half on the flat, the road sloped gradually toward a creek shadowed by willows. On the opposite side of the creek were a ranch-house, stables, and corrals, the extent of which brought a glint of surprise to Smith’s eyes.
    “That’s where the widder lives who might be sociable inclined if she was hard up,” said the girl, with a sneer which made Smith’s fingers itch to choke her. “Couldn’t coax you to stop, could I?”
    “I aims to stay,” Smith replied coolly.
    “Sure—it won’t cost you nothin’.”
    The girl waited for the wagon, and, with a change of manner in marked contrast to her impudent attitude toward Smith, invited the little man to spend the night at the ranch.
    “We should not be intruders?” he asked doubtfully.
    “You won’t feel lonesome,” she answered with a laugh. “We keep a kind of free hotel.”
    “Colonel, I cakalate we better lay over here,” broke in Tubbs.
    His employer winced at this new title, but nodded assent; so they all forded the shallow stream and entered the dooryard together.
    “Mother!” called the girl.
    One of the heavy plank doors of the long log-house opened, and a short woman, large-hipped, full-busted—in appearance a typical blanket squaw—stood in the doorway. Her thick hair was braided Indian fashion, her fingers adorned with many rings. The wide girdle about her waist was studded with brass nail-heads, while gaily-beaded moccasins covered her short, broad feet. Her eyes were soft and luminous, like an animal’s when it is content; but there was savage passion too in their dark depths.
    “This is my mother,” said the girl briefly. “I am Susie MacDonald.”
    “My name is Peter McArthur, madam.”
    The little man concealed his surprise as best he could, and bowed.
    The girl, quick to note his puzzled expression, explained laconically:
    “I’m a breed. My father was a white man. You’re on the reservation when you cross the crick.”
    Recovering himself, the stranger said politely:
    “Ah, MacDonald—that good Scotch name is a very familiar one to me. I had an uncle——”
    “I go show dem where to turn de horses,” interrupted the Indian woman, to whom the conversation was uninteresting. So, without ceremony, she padded away in her moccasins, drawing her blanket squaw-fashion across her face as she waddled down the path.
    At the mission the woman had obtained the rudiments of an education. There, too, she had learned to cut and make a dress, after a crude, laborious fashion, and had acquired the ways of the white people’s housekeeping. She was noted for the acumen which she displayed in disposing of the crop from her extensive hay-ranch to the neighboring white cattlemen; and MacDonald, the big, silent Scotch MacDonald who had come down from the north country and married her before the