Lonesome Land | Page 5

even went up and patted the girl on the shoulder.
"There, now, don't you worry none. Man's all right; I seen him at dinner
time. He was--" She stopped short, looked keenly at the delicate face,
and at the yellow-brown eyes which gazed back at her, innocent of evil,
trusting, wistful. "He spoke about your coming, and said he'd want the
use of the parlor this evening, for the wedding. I had an idea you was
coming on the six-twenty train. Maybe he thought so, too. I never heard
you come in--I was busy frying doughnuts in the kitchen--and I just
happened to come in here after something. You'd oughta rapped on that
door. Then I'd 'a' known you was here. I'll go and have my old man
hunt him up. He must be around town somewheres. Like as not he'll
meet the six-twenty, expecting you to be on it."
She smiled reassuringly as she turned to the inner door.
"You take off your hat and jacket, and pretty soon I'll show you up to a
room. I'll have to round up my old man first--and that's liable to take
time." She turned her eyes quizzically to the porky-cheeked portrait.
"You jest let Walt keep you company till I get back. He was real good
company when he was livin'."
She smiled again and went out briskly, came back, and stood with her
hand upon the cracked doorknob.
"I clean forgot your name," she hinted. "Man told me, at dinner time,
but I'm no good on earth at remembering names till after I've seen the
person it belongs to."
"Valeria Peyson--Val, they call me usually, at home." The
homesickness of the girl shone in her misty eyes, haunted her voice.
Mrs. Hawley read it, and spoke more briskly than she would otherwise
have done.
"Well, we're plumb strangers, but we ain't going to stay that way,

because every time you come to town you'll have to stop here; there
ain't any other place to stop. And I'm going to start right in calling you
Val. We don't use no ceremony with folk's names, out here. Val's a real
nice name, short and easy to say. Mine's Arline. You can call me by it
if you want to. I don't let everybody--so many wants to cut it down to
Leen, and I won't stand for that; I'm lean enough, without havin' it
throwed up to me. We might jest as well start in the way we're likely to
keep it up, and you won't feel so much like a stranger.
"I'm awful glad you're going to settle here--there ain't so awful many
women in the country; we have to rake and scrape to git enough for
three sets when we have a dance--and more likely we can't make out
more 'n two. D' you dance? Somebody said they seen a fiddle box down
to the depot, with a couple of big trunks; d' you play the fiddle?"
"A little," Valeria smiled faintly.
"Well, that'll come in awful handy at dances. We'd have 'em real often
in the winter if it wasn't such a job to git music. Well, I got too much to
do to be standin' here talkin'. I have to keep right after that breed girl all
the time, or she won't do nothing. I'll git my old man after your fellow
right away. Jest make yourself to home, and anything you want ask for
it in the kitchen." She smiled in friendly fashion and closed the door
with a little slam to make sure that it latched.
Valeria stood for a moment with her hands hanging straight at her sides,
staring absently at the door. Then she glanced at Walt, staring
wooden-faced from his gilt frame upon his gilt easel, and shivered. She
pushed the red plush chair as far away from him as possible, sat down
with her back to the picture, and immediately felt his dull, black eyes
boring into her back.
"What a fool I must be!" she said aloud, glancing reluctantly over her
shoulder at the portrait. She got up resolutely, placed the chair where it
had stood before, and stared deliberately at Walt, as if she would prove
how little she cared. But in a moment more she was crying dismally.
CHAPTER II

WELL-MEANT ADVICE
Kent Burnett, bearing over his arm a coat newly pressed in the
Delmonico restaurant, dodged in at the back door of the saloon, threw
the coat down upon the tousled bed, and pushed back his hat with a
gesture of relief at an onerous duty well performed.
"I had one hell of a time," he announced plaintively, "and that Chink
will likely try to poison me if I eat over there, after this--but I got her
ironed, all right. Get