Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/146

 Tom explained. The stranger was surprised that anybody would want to buy bones, but said he guessed there was no accounting for tastes. He pitched into the loading with energy, and soon they had the wagon heaped with enough, as the stranger said, to make a considerable number of razor and corn-knife handles. Tom said he didn't suppose many of them would be put to that purpose, considering the time they'd been lying out in the sun and weather. It was a new marvel to the stranger to learn that bones were used to enrich land. He said it was comforting to know that; some good might come of him, after all, at least what was left of him when the buzzards got through, from which Tom gathered that he did not expect to lie down for his final rest under the sod, but on top of it.

"From what you said about the women sellin' off, I reckon you married into the fam'ly since the winter kill?"

"I'm not married into the family," Tom corrected him coldly.

"Oh, you ain't?" said the horse-breaker, turning his head with a sharp, inquiring, interested movement, not in the least taken down by Tom's cool retort.

"Not at all."

"You could do worse," the stranger declared with conviction. "I thought that young lady was your wife. She sounded like a man's wife ort-a sound when she ast you if you was hurt."

"Yes, a man could do worse—a great deal worse," Tom agreed, considerably warmer in his manner.

"Related?"