which case the incoming man's friends and relatives would get the subordinate jobs. The tenure of her foothold at the political feed-box in McPacken was extremely insecure. The longer she held on, the more money she would have to begin the world with again, to be sure. But there would be more of Pap, also.
Another week was as long as she could endure Pap, to say nothing of the barren loneliness of that town. One more week, she resolved, in her firm, final way, and then good-by McPacken and the gray-green prairie swells. She would go back to the places where trees circumscribed the view, making the world seem smaller, less formidable to assault. Here the immensity of it was appalling. The heart quailed before it; the courage faltered and shrank away. It was a bleak land to be alone in; a weary land, with no cheer in its vast monotony; a land to break the heart, if it were a heart alone.
There was unusual life in the square tonight, a sound of music, a pressing of people around the center of attraction, which seemed to be a man standing in the town's one hack, which vehicle had its top down, giving it a bold and impertinent, if not a sporty and immoral, air. No less illustrious person than Banjo Gibson was seated in the hack behind the standing man. Banjo was playing them up, the standing man measuring them as they came.
Louise concluded, from Banjo's connection with the stranger, that he was one of those medicine adventurers who commonly appeared in that theatrical manner. In
