Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/257

, and sought to draw him out of his abstraction.

“I am so glad you and Mr. McCloud are getting acquainted with Cousin Lance,” she said. “And do you mind my giving you a confidence, Mr. Smith? Lance has been so unreasonable about this matter of the railroad’s coming up the valley and powwowing so much with lawyers and ranchers that he has been forgetting about everything at home. He is so much older than I am that he ought to be the sensible one of the family, don’t you think so? It frightens me to have him losing at cards and drinking. I am afraid he will get into some shooting affair. I don’t understand what has come over him, and I worry about it. I believe you could influence him if you knew him.”

“What makes you think that?” asked Whispering Smith, but his eyes were on the fire.

“Because these men he spends his time with in town—the men who fight and shoot so much—are afraid of you. Don’t laugh at me. I know it is quite true in spite of their talk. I was afraid of you myself until”

“Until we made verse together.”

“Until you made verse and I spoiled it. But I think it is because I don’t understand things that I am so afraid. I am not naturally a coward. 233