being overhauled, a young woman from Judson, a bare little town on the Reservation, had come as cook at the bunk house, to replace Slim who was to go with the outfit. And Henry began to talk of staying on for the shipping.
Then one day, and quite by accident, Herbert overheard something which cheered him considerably, which even gave him in a small way a weapon to his hand.
Henry was asleep in the shade of the straw stack and Herbert, who had tired of asking the sky questions and getting nothing but a sun burn in reply, had closed his eyes and was apparently so. Thus he caught a bit of conversation over the roar and rattle of the thresher.
"She's sure sore on him. I seen her in town, Sunday."
"She oughta know Tom by this time."
"That's what I told her, but she seemed to feel right bad."
"How'd she hear it?"
"Nellie, I guess. That kid sure doesn't miss anything."
Herbert lay still, hat over his eyes, and pondered. So Tom had had a girl, a town girl, and even she knew about Kay. The whole gossiping town knew, probably, the county, the state. And Kay was going on in her headstrong way, not knowing or not caring, and her people were both blind and complacent. But what could he do? He had his own code, had Herbert, and this code would have permitted him to warn Henry had his own interest not been involved. But to run whining to her father, that Kay was slipping away from him and into the hands of another man, never.
He looked at Henry, whose head was lolling against the straw stack. Under his unbuttoned waistcoat his figure suggested that he had swallowed one melon, whole, and between his parted lips Herbert could see gleaming a portion of the gold work which kept in place that piece of dental engineering which Henry called his "bridge." It came to Herbert with sickening force that life did these things to men, his kind anyhow. Youth and love slipped away, and after that food counted, and a soft bed and good cigars, but romance no longer lurked around the next corner, and perhaps after a time they did not care.
He hoped so, anyhow.
