II


Salomy Jane watched the cavalcade until it had disappeared. Then she
became aware that her brief popularity had passed. Mrs. Red Pete,
in stormy hysterics, had included her in a sweeping denunciation of
the whole universe, possibly for simulating an emotion in which she
herself was deficient. The other women hated her for her momentary
exaltation above them; only the children still admired her as one who
had undoubtedly "canoodled" with a man "a-going to be hung"--a daring
flight beyond their wildest ambition. Salomy Jane accepted the change
with charming unconcern. She put on her yellow nankeen sunbonnet,--a
hideous affair that would have ruined any other woman, but which only
enhanced the piquancy of her fresh brunette skin,--tied the strings,
letting the blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind,
jumped on her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles in shapely
white stockings, whistled to the hound, and waving her hand with a "So
long, sonny!" to the lately bereft but admiring nephew, flapped and
fluttered away in her short brown holland gown.

Her father's house was four miles distant. Contrasted with the
cabin she had just quitted, it was a superior dwelling, with a long
"lean-to" at the rear, which brought the eaves almost to the ground
and made it look like a low triangle. It had a long barn and cattle
sheds, for Madison Clay was a "great" stockraiser and the owner of
a "quarter section." It had a sitting-room and a parlor organ, whose
transportation thither had been a marvel of "packing." These things