He obeyed me
exactly in everything, with an exaggerated ironical precision, and seemed
to find amusement in it. I questioned him about Manuel. He had gone to one
of the lower ranches, would not be back for weeks. By whose orders was he
attending me? By Manuel's, he said. He must then have had qualifications.
"'What is one to call you?' I asked him.
"He hesitated an instant. 'Jim is what I answer to around here,' said he.
"'What is your _name_?' I repeated.
"'The lady can call me anything she likes,'--he spoke in a low, lazy
voice,--'but Dick Malaby is my name.'
"We have better heroes now than the Cheyenne cowboys, but I felt as a girl
to-day would feel if she discovered she had been telling one of the men of
the Merrimac to ride behind!"
"They would not need to be told," Mrs. Thorne interjected.
"No, that is the difference; but discipline did not appeal to me then;
recklessness did. Every man on the place had taken sides on the Wyoming
question; feeling ran high. Some of them had friends and relatives among
the victims. Yet this man in hiding had tossed me his name to play with,
not even asking for my silence, though it was the price of his life, and
all in a light-hearted contempt for the curious ways of the 'tony set,' as
he would have called us.
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