Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/86

 his neck shaved. A mane like that would go against him with the railroaders, who were great for the neck-shave. And a head of hair like his—it was thick as nature could sow it, black, smooth and long—a head of hair like his was something to bring him down to scorn in the critical railroad eye.

"If you'd get your neck shaved," she suggested, not at all delicately, nor with any feeling whatever of invading a private preserve, "that might—"

She broke off suddenly into a laugh, loud, unmistakably derisive, with a big stretch of mouth and display of teeth. The doctor had clapped his hand to the back of his neck with her suggestion, as if a bee had stung him. He looked so startled, so innocently shocked, as if he had been caught in some grave trespass on the conventions of railroad life, that Mrs. Charles would have blown her teeth out trying to hold back that laugh.

"And your hair cut," she said, stopping her laughter with that abruptness which seemed to be a family gift, just like shutting the oven door. She only smiled when the doctor ran his hand from his fuzzy mane to his long hair, forking it with his spread fingers like a farmer turning a windrow of hay.

"Gosh! I guess you're right," he said.

"They're talkin' of makin' this town a division point," Mrs. Charles informed him, as if her blunt suggestion for his personal adornment had been made to put him in line of preparation for the reward the future held. "If they do, it wouldn't be a bad place for a young doctor to settle down."

"I don't know. Everybody I talk with here gives the country a hard name. They say there's no chance for a