one of his pizenous tricks," responded Mrs. McKinstry
dolefully from within. "On'y last week he let in a Chinaman, and in the
nat'ral hustlin' that follered he managed to help himself outer the pork
bar'l. There ain't no shade o' cussedness that or'nary hound ain't up
to." Yet notwithstanding this ominous comparison she presently made
her appearance with her sleeves turned down, her black woollen
dress "tidied," and a smile of fatigued but not unkindly welcome and
protection on her face. Dusting a chair with her apron and placing it
before the master, she continued maternally, "Now that you're here, set
ye right down and make yourself to home. My men folks are all out o'
door, but some of 'em's sure to happen in soon for suthin'; that day
ain't yet created that they don't come huntin' up Mammy McKinstry every
five minutes for this thing or that."

The glow of a certain hard pride burned through the careworn languor of
her brown cheek. What she had said was strangely true. This raw-boned
woman before him, although scarcely middle-aged, had for years occupied
a self-imposed maternal and protecting relation, not only to her husband
and brothers, but to the three or four men, who as partners, or hired
hands, lived at the ranch. An inherited and trained sympathy with what
she called her "boys's" and her "men folk," and their needs had
partly unsexed her. She was a fair type of a class not uncommon on the
Southwestern frontier; women who were ruder helpmeets of their rude
husbands and brothers, who had shared their privations and sufferings
with surly, masculine endurance, rather than feminine patience; women
who had sent their loved ones to hopeless adventure or terrible vendetta
as a matter of course, or with partisan fury; who had devotedly nursed
the wounded to keep alive the feud, or had received back their dead
dry-eyed and revengeful. Small wonder that Cressy McKinstry had
developed strangely under this sexless relationship. Looking at the
mother, albeit not without a certain respect, Mr. Ford found himself
contrasting her with the daughter's graceful femininity, and wondering
where in Cressy's youthful contour the possibility of the grim figure
before him was even now hidden.

"Hiram allowed to go over to the schoolhouse and see you this mornin',"
said Mrs. McKinstry, after a pause; "but I reckon ez how he had to
look up stock on the river. The cattle are that wild this time o'
year, huntin' water, and hangin' round