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Hank’s Woman
by
“And while he was away she’d have us all in to supper up at the shack, and look at us eatin’ while she’d walk around puttin’ grub on your plate. Day time she’d come around the ditch, watchin’ for a while, and move off slow, singin’ her Dutch songs. And when Hank comes back from spendin’ his dust, he sees the crucifix same as always, and he says, ‘Didn’t I tell yu’ to take that down?’ ‘You did,’ says Willomene, lookin’ at him very quiet. And he quit.
“And Honey Wiggin says to him, ‘Hank, leave her alone.’ And Hank, bein’ all trembly from spreein’ in town, he says, ‘You’re all agin me!’ like as if he were a baby.”
“I should think you would run him out of camp,” said I.
“Well, we’ve studied over that some,” McLean answered. “But what’s to be done with Willomene?”
I did not know. None of us seemed to know.
“The boys got together night before last,” continued McLean, “and after holdin’ a unanimous meetin’, we visited her and spoke to her about goin’ back to her home. She was slow in corrallin’ our idea on account of her bein’ no English scholar. But when she did, after three of us takin’ their turn at puttin’ the proposition to her, she would not accept any of our dust. And though she started to thank us the handsomest she knowed how, it seemed to grieve her, for she cried. So we thought we’d better get out. She’s tried to tell us the name of her home, but yu’ can’t pronounce such outlandishness.”
As we went down the mountains, we talked of other things, but always came back to this; and we were turning it over still when the sun had departed from the narrow cleft that we were following, and shone only on the distant grassy tops which rose round us into an upper world of light.
“We’ll all soon have to move out of this camp, anyway,” said McLean, unstrapping his coat from his saddle and drawing it on. “It gets chill now in the afternoons. D’ yu’ see the quakin’-asps all turned yello’, and the leaves keeps fallin’ without no wind to blow ’em down? We’re liable to get snowed in on short notice in this mountain country. If the water goes to freeze on us we’ll have to quit workin’. There’s camp.”
We had rounded a corner, and once more sighted the cabin. I suppose it may have been still half a mile away, upon the further side of a ravine into which our little valley opened. But field-glasses were not needed now to make out the cabin clearly, windows and door. Smoke rose from it; for supper-time was nearing, and we stopped to survey the scene. As we were looking, another hunter joined us, coming from the deep woods to the edge of the pines where we were standing. This was Honey Wiggin. He had killed a deer, and he surmised that all the boys would be back soon. Others had met luck besides himself; he had left one dressing an elk over the next ridge. Nobody seemed to have got in yet, from appearances. Didn’t the camp look lonesome?
“There’s somebody, though,” said McLean.
The Virginian took the glasses. “I reckon–yes, that’s Hank. The cold has woke him up, and he’s comin’ in out o’ the brush.”
Each of us took the glasses in turn; and I watched the figure go up the hill to the door of the cabin. It seemed to pause and diverge to the window. At the window it stood still, head bent, looking in. Then it returned quickly to the door. It was too far to discern, even through the glasses, what the figure was doing. Whether the door was locked, whether he was knocking or fumbling with a key, or whether he spoke through the door to the person within–I cannot tell what it was that came through the glasses straight to my nerves, so that I jumped at a sudden sound; and it was only the distant shrill call of an elk. I was handing the glasses to the Virginian for him to see when the figure opened the door and disappeared in the dark interior. As I watched the square of darkness which the door’s opening made, something seemed to happen there–or else it was a spark, a flash, in my own straining eyes.