Waifs and Strays, etc | Page 4

Tonia Weaver adorable, especially when she
railed at railroads and menaced men. Either would have given up his
epidermis to make for her an Easter hat more cheerfully than the ostrich
gives up his tip or the aigrette lays down its life. Neither possessed the
ingenuity to conceive a means of supplying the sad deficiency against
the coming Sabbath. Pearson's deep brown face and sunburned light
hair gave him the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth's
profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia's plight grieved him
through and through. Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and
pliable. He hailed from somewhere in the East originally; and he wore
neckties and shoes, and was made dumb by woman's presence.
"The big water-hole on Sandy Creek," said Pearson, scarcely hoping to
make a hit, "was filled up by that last rain."
"Oh! Was it?" said Tonia sharply. "Thank you for the information. I
suppose a new hat is nothing to you, Mr. Pearson. I suppose you think a
woman ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a change, as
you do. If your old water-hole could have put out the fire on that trestle
you might have some reason to talk about it."

"I am deeply sorry," said Burrows, warned by Pearson's fate, "that you
failed to receive your hat, Miss Weaver--deeply sorry, indeed. If there
was anything I could do--"
"Don't bother," interrupted Tonia, with sweet sarcasm. "If there was
anything you could do, you'd be doing it, of course. There isn't."
Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come into her eye. Her
frown smoothed away. She had an inspiration.
"There's a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the Nueces," she said,
"that keeps hats. Eva Rogers got hers there. She said it was the latest
style. It might have some left. But it's twenty-eight miles to Lone Elm."
The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; and Tonia almost
smiled. The Knights, then, were not all turned to dust; nor were their
rowels rust.
"Of course," said Tonia, looking thoughtfully at a white gulf cloud
sailing across the cerulean dome, "nobody could ride to Lone Elm and
back by the time the girls call by for me to-morrow. So, I reckon I'll
have to stay at home this Easter Sunday."
And then she smiled.
"Well, Miss Tonia," said Pearson, reaching for his hat, as guileful as a
sleeping babe. "I reckon I'll be trotting along back to Mucho Calor.
There's some cutting out to be done on Dry Branch first thing in the
morning; and me and Road Runner has got to be on hand. It's too bad
your hat got sidetracked. Maybe they'll get that trestle mended yet in
time for Easter."
"I must be riding, too, Miss Tonia," announced Burrows, looking at his
watch. "I declare, it's nearly five o'clock! I must be out at my lambing
camp in time to help pen those crazy ewes."
Tonia's suitors seemed to have been smitten with a need for haste. They
bade her a ceremonious farewell, and then shook each other's hands
with the elaborate and solemn courtesy of the Southwesterner.
"Hope I'll see you again soon, Mr. Pearson," said Burrows.
"Same here," said the cowman, with the serious face of one whose
friend goes upon a whaling voyage. "Be gratified to see you ride over
to Mucho Calor any time you strike that section of the range."
Pearson mounted Road Runner, the soundest cow-pony on the Frio, and
let him pitch for a minute, as he always did on being mounted, even at
the end of a day's travel.

"What kind of a hat was that, Miss Tonia," he called, "that you ordered
from San Antone? I can't help but be sorry about that hat."
"A straw," said Tonia; "the latest shape, of course; trimmed with red
roses. That's what I like--red roses."
"There's no color more becoming to your complexion and hair," said
Burrows, admiringly.
"It's what I like," said Tonia. "And of all the flowers, give me red roses.
Keep all the pinks and blues for yourself. But what's the use, when
trestles burn and leave you without anything? It'll be a dry old Easter
for me!"
Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Bunner at a gallop into the
chaparral east of the Espinosa ranch house.
As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows's long-legged sorrel
struck out down the narrow stretch of open prairie to the southwest.
Tonia hung up her quirt and went into the sitting-room.
"I'm mighty sorry, daughter, that you didn't get your hat," said her
mother.
"Oh, don't worry, mother," said Tonia, coolly. "I'll have a new hat, all
right, in time to-morrow."
When Burrows reached the end of the strip of prairie he pulled