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“That’s so!”

“He ain’t made her quit it yet?”

“Not him. But he’s got meaner.”

“Drunk this mawnin’, yu’ say?”

“That’s his most harmless condition now.”

“Nobody’s in camp but them two? Her and him alone?”

“Oh, he dassent touch her.”

“Who did he tell that to?”

“Oh, the camp is backin’ her. The camp has explained that to him several times, you bet! And what’s more, she has got the upper hand of him herself. She has him beat.”

“How beat?”

“She has downed him with her eye. Just by endurin’ him peacefully; and with her eye. I’ve saw it. Things changed some after yu’ pulled out. We had a good crowd still, and it was pleasant, and not too lively nor yet too slow. And Willomene, she come more among us. She’d not stay shut in-doors, like she done at first. I’d have like to’ve showed her how to punish Hank.”

“Afteh she had downed yu’ with her eye?” inquired the Virginian.

Young McLean reddened, and threw a furtive look upon me, the stranger, the outsider. “Oh, well,” he said, “I done nothing onusual. But that’s all different now. All of us likes her and respects her, and makes allowances for her bein’ Dutch. Yu’ can’t help but respect her. And she shows she knows.”

“I reckon maybe she knows how to deal with Hank,” said the Virginian.

“Shucks!” said McLean, scornfully. And her so big and him so puny! She’d ought to lift him off the earth with one arm and lam him with a baste or two with the other, and he’d improve.”

“Maybe that’s why she don’t,” mused the Virginian, slowly; “because she is so big. Big in the spirit, I mean. She’d not stoop to his level. Don’t yu’ see she is kind o’ way up above him and camp and everything–just her and her crucifix?”

“Her and her crucifix!” repeated young Lin McLean, staring at this interpretation, which was beyond his lively understanding. “Her and her crucifix. Turruble lonesome company! Well, them are things yu’ don’t know about. I kind o’ laughed myself the first time I seen her at it. Hank, he says to me soft, ‘Come here, Lin,’ and I peeped in where she was a-prayin’. She seen us two, but she didn’t quit. So I quit, and Hank came with me, sayin’ tough words about it. Yes, them are things yu’ sure don’t know about. What’s the matter with you camping with us boys tonight?”

We had been going to visit them the next day. We made it to-day, instead. And Mr. McLean helped us with our packs, and we carried our welcome in the shape of elk meat. So we turned our faces down the grass-topped mountains towards Galena Creek. Once, far through an open gap away below us, we sighted the cabin with the help of our field-glasses.

“Pity we can’t make out Hank sleepin’ in that brush,” said McLean.

“He has probably gone into the cabin by now,” said I.

“Not him! He prefers the brush all day when he’s that drunk, you bet!”

“Afraid of her?”

“Well–oneasy in her presence. Not that she’s liable to be in there now. She don’t stay inside nowadays so much. She’s been comin’ round the ditch, silent-like but friendly. And she’ll watch us workin’ for a spell, and then she’s apt to move off alone into the woods, singin’ them Dutch songs of hern that ain’t got no toon. I’ve met her walkin’ that way, tall and earnest, lots of times. But she don’t want your company, though she’ll patch your overalls and give yu’ lunch always. Nor she won’t take pay.”

Thus we proceeded down from the open summits into the close pines; and while we made our way among the cross-timber and over the little streams, McLean told us of various days and nights at the camp, and how Hank had come to venting his cowardice upon his wife’s faith.

“Why, he informed her one day when he was goin’ take his dust to town, that if he come back and found that thing in the house, he’d do it up for her. ‘So yu’ better pack off your wooden dummy somewheres,’ says he. And she just looked at him kind o’ stone-like and solemn. For she don’t care for his words no more.