“You be a right smart young maverick not to get lost none on this long trail, and no one to p’int you right if you strayed,” commented Mary’s patroness, affably.  “But we won’t roominate here no longer than we can help.  It’s too hard on old Ma’am Rodney.  She’s just ’bout the color of withered cabbage now, ‘long of me havin’ you.”

While she talked, Mrs. Yellett picked up Mary’s trunk and bags and stowed them in the back of the buckboard with the ease with which another woman might handle pasteboard boxes.  One or two of the male Rodneys offered to help, but she waved them aside and lashed the luggage to the buckboard, handling the ropes with the skill of an old sailor.  The entire Rodney family and the suitors of Eudora assembled to witness the departure.  “It’s a heap friendly of you to fret so,” was the parting stab of Sarah Yellett to Sally Rodney; and she swung the backboard about, cleared the cactus stumps in the Rodney door-yard, and gained the mountain-road.

“Ai-yi!” said old Sally.  “What’s this country comin’ to?”

“A few more women, thank God!” remarked Ira.  Eudora had just snubbed him, and he put a wealth of meaning into his look after the vanishing buckboard.

The night was magnificent.  From horizon to horizon the sky was sown with quivering points of light.  Each straggling clump of sage-brush, rocky ledge, and bowlder borrowed a beauty not its own from the yellow radiance of the stars.

They had gone a good two miles before Mary’s patroness broke the silence with, “Nothing plumb stampedes my temper like that Rodney outfit—­old Sally buckin’ an’ pitchin’ in her rockin’-chair same as if she was breakin’ a bronco, an’ that Eudory always corallin’, deceivin’, and jiltin’ one outfit of men after another.  If she was a daughter of mine, I’d medjure her length across my knee, full growed and courted though she is.  The only one of the outfit that’s wuth while is Judith, an’ she ain’t old woman Rodney’s girl, neither.  You hyeard that already, did you?  Well, this yere country may be lackin’ in population, but it’s handy as a sewin’-circle in distributin’ news.”

Mary mentioned Leander.  “Yes,” answered Mrs. Yellett, reflectively, “Leander’s mouth do run about eight and a half octaves.  Sometimes I don’t blame his wife for bangin’ down the lid.”

They talked of Jim Rodney’s troubles, and the growing hatred between sheep and cattle men, because of range rights.

“Now that pore Jim had a heap of good citizen in him, before that pestiferous cattle outfit druv’ his sheep over the cliff.  Relations ’twixt sheep and cattle men in this yere country is strained beyant the goin’-back place, I can tell you.  My pistol-eye ’ain’t had a wink of sleep for nigh on eighteen months, an’ is broke to wakefulness same as a teethin’ babe.