Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/84

 "Experience is a queer sort of thing that way," Tom Simpson said reflectively. "It flies up and hits a chap when he isn't looking, oftener than not."

"It sure does," she agreed, looking at him shrewdly, not at all surprised to hear him talk that way. "Was you born out there in Wyoming?"

"Far from it. I was born in Manchester, England. My father is a tanner there, a very good tanner as tanners go, madam."

"Is that so? Well, you don't tell me! And you didn't like the tannin' business, I guess. I don't blame you—I don't blame you. I used to pass a on my way to school back in Lexington, Missouri. I don't blame you a bit."

This piece of confidence about his beginning, which Mrs. Ellison did not question or doubt in any particular, put her on almost a confidential footing with Tom Simpson at once. It wasn't everybody in that country who would tell where he came from with the undoubted sincerity of that young man. He was far from home and kindred, and she began to have a motherly feeling for him, especially since his folks had something to do with a by-product of the livestock industry.

She went at once into a lively history of the Ellison ranch, its past prosperity and recent losses, to all of which he listened with genuine interest. Mainly on account of that extraordinary girl in man's pants. He had met plenty of cattle-ranch ladies in his wide roaming, but never one like her. There was something in the shading of her speech, there was something in her eyes—a