“Look here,” she said, “I reckon that’ll do!  You kin pull up short!  I kin see what’s the matter with you; you’re jest plumb tired, tuckered out, and want to turn in!  So jest you sit that quiet until I get supper ready and never mind me.”  In vain Hemmingway protested, with a rising color.  The girl only shook her head.  “Don’t tell me!  You ain’t keering to talk, and you’re only playin’ Sacramento statistics on me,” she retorted, with unfeigned cheerfulness.  “Anyhow, here’s the wimmen comin’, and supper is ready.”

There was a sound of weary, resigned ejaculations and pantings, and three gaunt women in lustreless alpaca gowns appeared before the cabin.  They seemed prematurely aged and worn with labor, anxiety, and ill nourishment.  Doubtless somewhere in these ruins a flower like Jay Jules had once flourished; doubtless somewhere in that graceful nymph herself the germ of this dreary maturity was hidden.  Hemmingway welcomed them with a seriousness equal to their own.  The supper was partaken with the kind of joyless formality which in the southwest is supposed to indicate deep respect, even the cheerful Jay falling under the influence, and it was with a feeling of relief that at last the young man retired to his fenced-off corner for solitude and repose.  He gathered, however, that before “sun up” the next morning the elder women were going to Rattlesnake Bar for the weekly shopping, leaving Jay as before to prepare his breakfast and then join them later.  It was already a change in his sentiments to find himself looking forward to that tete-a-tete with the young girl, as a chance of redeeming his character in her eyes.  He was beginning to feel he had been stupid, unready, and withal prejudiced.  He undressed himself in his seclusion, broken only by the monotonous voices in the adjoining apartment.  From time to time he heard fragments and scraps of their conversation, always in reference to affairs of the household and settlement, but never of himself,—­not even the suggestion of a prudent lowering of their voices,—­and fell asleep.  He woke up twice in the night with a sensation of cold so marked and distinct from his experience of the early evening, that he was fain to pile his clothes over his blankets to keep warm.  He fell asleep again, coming once more to consciousness with a sense of a slight jar, but relapsing again into slumber for he knew not how long.  Then he was fully awakened by a voice calling him, and, opening his eyes, beheld the blanket partition put aside, and the face of Jay thrust forward.  To his surprise it wore a look of excited astonishment dominated by irrepressible laughter.

“Get up quick as you kin,” she said gaspingly; “this is about the killingest thing that ever happened!”