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Page 58
As the commonplace ever intrudes upon the unusual, so a knock on
the door relieved the tension of the situation. It was Slim. He
did not wait for an invitation to enter, but, opening the door,
asked: "Can I come in?"
"Sure, come in," cried Polly, glad to find any excuse to shake
off the depression of Echo's dream.
"Howdy, Mrs. Payson, just come over to see Jack," was the jolly
Sheriff's greeting.
"He's down at the corral," she informed him.
Mrs. Allen hurried in from the kitchen at this moment, calling:
"Echo, come here, and look at this yere cake. It looks as if it
had been sot upon."
Echo closed the lid of the piano and called her mother's
attention to the presence of Slim Hoover.
"How d'ye do, Slim Hoover?--you might have left some of that dust
outside."
The Sheriff was greatly embarrassed by her chiding. In his ride
from Florence to the Sweetwater, the alkali and sand stirred up
by the hoofs of the horses had settled on his hat and waistcoat
so freely that his clothing had assumed a neutral, gray tone
above which his sun-tanned face and red hair loomed like the moon
in a fog. Josephine's scolding drove him to brush his shoulders
with his hat, raising a cloud of dust about his head.
"Stop it!" Mrs. Allen shouted shrilly. "Slim Hoover, if your
brains was dynamite you couldn't blow the top of your head off."
Polly was greatly amused by Slim's encounter with the cleanly
Mrs. Allen. Slim stood with open mouth, watching Mrs. Allen
flounce out of the room after Polly, who was trying in vain to
suppress her laughter. Turning to the girl, he said: "Ain't seen
you in some time."
Slim was thankful that the girl was seated at the table with her
back to him. Somehow or other he found he could speak to her
more freely when she was not looking at him.
"That so?" she challenged. "Come to the birthday?"
"Not regular," he answered.
Polly glanced at him over her shoulder. It was too much for
Slim. He turned away to hide his embarrassment. Partly
recovering from his bashfulness, he coughed, preparatory to
speaking. But Polly had vanished. As one looks sheepishly for
the magician's disappearing coin, so Slim gazed at floor and
ceiling as if the girl might pop up anywhere. Spying an empty
chair behind him, he sank into it gingerly and awkwardly.
Meantime Polly returned with a broom and began sweeping out the
evidences of Slim's visit. She spoke again:
"Get them hold-ups yet that killed 'Ole Man' Terrill?" she asked.
"Not yet. But we had a new shootin' over'n our town yesterday."
Slim was doing his best to make conversation. Polly did not help
him out very freely.
"That so?" was her reply.
"Spotted Taylor shot two Chinamen."
Polly's curiosity was aroused.
"What for?" she asked, stopping her sweeping for a moment.
"Just to give the new graveyard a start," Slim chuckled.
Polly joined in his merriment.
"Spotted Taylor was always a public-spirited citizen," was her
comment.
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