Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/347

 He stopped. He had a horrible lump in his throat. He blinked wildly, turned and limped out.

He had recovered himself when he got to the street. It was a day of brilliant sunshine, like the one when he and Kay had come back to Ursula; the same heat, the same procession of cars from the back country, the same friendly greetings.

"Tom, you old son of a gun, what you doin' in town?"

"I figured on getting a hair-cut."

"Well, it's sure time!"

He moved up the street. His foot was very bad, his grin a trifle fixed, but he was supremely happy. The Indians had taken advantage of the good roads to come to town for their buying; in brilliant shawls and high moccasins the squaws stared into the shop windows, sometimes with a bead-eyed baby looking over their shoulders. Tom thought he saw Weasel Tail's widow among them, but he was not sure. But what did it matter? Weasel Tail and Little Dog had faded to the background of his mind; the long hard winter was as though it had never been. Summer was here again; the trees were in full leaf, the little gardens in bloom, the creeks running bank full, the wide plains green and lush with grass. And Kay!

He passed the Emporium without a glance or a thought, but in front of the new haberdashery on a corner he stopped. There was a complete outfit in the window, a suit of a violent blue, a straw hat, a pair of yellow shoes. He would see Dunham, and on the way back he would stop in and buy it. Time: enough later to figure how to pay for it. Kay mustn't be ashamed of him.

He limped on, up the street. . ..

Lily May was on the doctor's doorstep, and the old doctor was inside. It took both of them, with Lily May looking on, to get his boots off, and when the old doctor had examined the leg, he straightened and glared at him.

"What the hell have you been doing to it? Are you trying to lose your leg, like Gus?"

"I knocked it some, a while back. Horse threw me against a post."