Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/293

 likely stretched out on the floor of the commissary car, Hall knew, refreshing themselves with a nap. Mrs. Charles dashed up the steps, moved by a sudden onrush of despair, silent and grim, striding like a man, her hair flying in forty ways.

"Well, what do you think of that?" Nance said, crossing back to where Hall stood looking at the empty kitchen door.

"It looks like he roped her in after all,' Hall replied.

"I didn't know the old dame had anything up on him, or I wouldn't 'a' tipped it off to her. I told her it was on the q.t. too, and listen at her—just listen at her!"

It didn't require any great concentration to hear Mrs. Charles. She was raging around in the train, plainly in a wrathful mood now, railing and accusing and berating, the object of her reproach no matter of speculation for Hall. Mary was catching it, Annie standing between, as the girl's soothing, pacific voice attested, low and pleading, like the note of a violin in a boisterous storm of brass.

Nance heard his instrument sounding his call, insistently, imperiously, as a way-station call always sounds when a despatcher does not get an immediate response. He dashed up the platform to answer it, Mrs. Charles' clamor pursuing him, the first note of denunciation and bitter reproach the news of Burnett's rascality set sounding not only in Damascus, but through three states of the middle country east of Dodge.

Hall was not moved by any great depth of sympathy or pity for Mrs. Charles, for it is against human vanity to raise up either for one who has disregarded one's wise counsel and disinterested advice. Let her howl it out,