"Curly," says I, "you're shot, and you got to be good in a small voice, or----"
"Good," says Curly; "I'm a wolf. I come from Bitter Creek. The higher up, the worse the waters, and I'm from the source, and it's my night to how-w-l. Yow-ow-ow!"
"Well," Miss Pansy shrieked, "I call it disgraceful, so there!"
"I don't care," says Curly. "I won't be good in a small voice, and I'll call this dear ole hoss-thief all the names I please. Why, Chalkeye and me punched cows at Holy Cross! Say, Chalkeye, d'you remember when I stuck burrs in under yo' saddle, and you got pitched to glory? Why, that's the very old hat I shot full of holes, and oh, I do enjoy to see you so much, you dear ole villain!"
Then Miss Blossom dragged Miss Pansy away to cook supper, and Curly settled down with her little paw in my fist.
"My habits," says she, "is a sure scandal, and I ain't got no more manners nor a bear. My language ain't becoming to a young gentlewoman, and my eating would disgrace a pinto hawss. They cayn't refawm me a lil' bit, and when I tries to set up on my tail, and look pretty, they tell me rebukes for crossin' my laigs like a cowboy. Oh, take me away, ole Chalkeye, take me away to the range and the camps, to feel the night-frosts agin, to sleep with the stars, to see the sun come up, to ride in the heat. This roof sets down on me at night. I cayn't see for walls; I cayn't get air to breathe. These ladies has roped me, and thrown me, tied down for branding, ears in the dust. Oh, take me away from this!"
"When that bandage is off yo' arm I'll take you, Curly."
She had scarcely strength yet to travel, and yet if she fretted like this at being shut up in a house, would she ever get well at all?
When I reflect what Curly looked like then it makes me wonder what sort of raging lunatic I had been to leave her in that house. By way of disguise she had a wig all sideways, and female clothes which she'd never learned to wear. They made her look like a man. Her skin had the desert tan; she moved and talked like a cowboy. But most of all, her eyes gave her dead away--the steel-blue eyes of a scout, more used to gun-fights than to needlework, which bored right through me. Only a frontiersman has eyes like that; only the outlaw has the haunted look which comes with slaying of men, and Curly was branded that way beyond mistake.