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Hank’s Woman
by
“So I fooled and I fooled. And one noon I was on the front poach of the big hotel they have opened at the Mammoth Springs for tourists, and the hotel kid, bein’ on the watchout, he sees the dust comin’ up the hill, and he yells out, ‘Stage!’
“Yu’ve not saw that hotel yet, seh? Well, when the kid says ‘Stage,’ the consequences is most sudden. About as conspicuous, yu’ may say, as when Old Faithful Geyser lets loose. Yu’ see, one batch o’ tourists pulls out right after breakfast for Norris Basin, leavin’ things empty and yawnin’. By noon the whole hotel outfit has been slumberin’ in its chairs steady for three hours. Maybe yu’ might hear a fly buzz, but maybe not. Everything’s liable to be restin’, barrin’ the kid. He’s a-watchin’ out. Then he sees the dust, and he says ‘Stage!’ and it touches the folks off like a hot pokeh. The Syndicate manager he lopes to a lookin’glass, and then organizes himself behind the book; and the young photograph chap bounces out o’ his private door like one o’ them cuckoo clocks; and the fossil man claws his specimens and curiosities into shape, and the porters line up same as parade, and away goes the piano and fiddles up-stairs. It is mighty conspicuous. So Hank he come rennin’ out from somewheres too, and the stage drives up.
“Then out gets a tall woman, and I noticed her yello’ hair. She was kind o’ dumb-eyed, yet fine to see. I reckon Hank noticed her too, right away. And right away her trouble begins. For she was a lady’s maid, and her lady was out of the stage and roundin’ her up quick. And it’s ‘ Where have you put the keys, Willomene?’ The lady was rich and stinkin’ lookin’, and had come from New Yawk in her husband’s private cyar.
“Well, Willomene fussed around in her pockets, and them keys was not there. So she started explaining in tanglefoot English to her lady how her lady must have took them from her before leavin’ the cyar. But the lady seemed to relish hustlin’ herself into a rage. She got tolerable conspicuous, too. And after a heap o’ words, ‘You are discharged,’ she says; and off she struts. Soon her husband came out to Willomene, still standin’ like statuary, and he pays her a good sum of cash, and he goes away, and she keeps a standing yet for a spell. Then all of a sudden she says something I reckon was ‘O, Jesus,’ and sits down and starts a cryin’.
“I would like to have given her comfort. But we all stood around on the hotel poach, and the right thing would not come into my haid. Then the baggage-wagon came in from Cinnabar, and they had picked the keys up on the road between Cinnabar and Gardner. So the lady and her toilet was rescued, but that did no good to Willomene. They stood her trunk down along with the rest–a brass-nailed little old concern–and there was Willomene out of a job and afoot a long, long ways from her own range; and so she kept sitting, and onced in a while she’d cry some more. We got her a room in the cheap hotel where the Park drivers sleeps when they’re in at the Springs, and she acted grateful like, thanking the boys in her tanglefoot English. Next mawnin’ her folks druv off in a private team to Norris Basin, and she seemed dazed. For I talked with her then, and questioned her as to her wishes, but she could not say what she wished, nor if it was East or West she would go; and I reckon she was too stricken to have wishes.
“Our stuff for Galena Creek delayed on the railroad, and I got to know her, and then I quit givin’ Hank cause for jealousy. I kept myself with the boys, and I played more cyards, while Hank he sca’cely played at all. One night I came on them–Hank and Willomene–walkin’ among the pines where the road goes down the hill. Yu’ should have saw that pair o’ lovers. Her big shape was plain and kind o’ steadfast in the moon, and alongside of her little black Hank! And there it was. Of course it ain’t nothing to be surprised at that a mean and triflin’ man tries to seem what he is not when he wants to please a good woman. But why does she get fooled, when it’s so plain to other folks that are not givin’ it any special thought? All the rest of the men and women at the Mammoth under- stood Hank. They knowed he was a worthless proposition. And I cert’nly relied on his gettin’ back to his whiskey and openin’ her eyes that way. But he did not. I met them next evening again by the Liberty Cap. Sup- posin’ I’d been her brother or her mother, what use was it me warning her? Brothers and mothers don’t get believed.