If she did--" His thoughts went hazy with vague
speculation, then clarified suddenly into one hard fact, like a rock
thrusting up through the lazy sweep of a windless tide. "If she did
care, I couldn't do anything. I'm married!"
His step lost a little of its spring, then, and he went into the
bunk-house with much the same expression on his face as when he had left
it an hour or so before.
He did not see Dick that day. The other boys watched him covertly, it
seemed to him, and showed a disposition to talk among themselves. Jim
was whistling cheerfully in the kitchen. He turned his head and laughed
when Ford went in.
"I found a dead soldier behind the sack of spuds," Jim announced, and
produced an empty bottle, mate to the one Ford had thrown into the
gully. "And Dick didn't seem to have any appetite at all, and Mose is
still in Sleepytown. I guess that's all the news at this end of the
line. Er--hope everything is all right at the house?"
"Far as I could see, it was," Ford replied, with an inner sense of
evasion. "I guess we'll just let her go as she looks, Jim. Did you say
anything to the boys?"
Jim reddened under his tan, but he laughed disarmingly.
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