Dandeline placed the food upon the table and sank, quiet
as a mouse into a chair beneath the glass bracket-lamp with her large
dark eyes fixed upon Patty, who devoured the unappetizing food with an
enthusiasm born of real hunger, while the older woman analyzed volubly
the characteristics, facial and temperamental, of each and several of
the numerous Watts progeny.

Having exhausted the subject of offspring, Ma Watts flashed a direct
question. "How's yer pa, an' where's he at?"

"My father died last month," answered the girl without raising her
eyes from her plate.

"Fer the land sakes, child! I want to know!"

"Watts! Watts!" The lank form appeared in the doorway. "This here's
Mr. Sinclair's darter, an' he's up an' died."

The man's fingers fumbled uncertainly at his beard, as his wife paused
for the intelligence to strike home. "Folks does," he opined,
judiciously after a profound interval.

"That's so, when yo' come to think 'bout hit," admitted Ma Watts.
"What did he die of?"

"Cerebrospinal meningitis."

"My goodness sakes! I should think he would! When my pa died--back in
Tennessee, hit wus, the doctor 'lowed hit wus the eetch, but sho',
he'd hed thet fer hit wus goin' on seven year. 'Bout a week 'fore he
come to die, he got so's 't he couldn't eat nothin', an' he wus thet
het up with the fever he like to burnt up, an' his head ached him fit
to bust, an' he wus out of hit fer four days, an' I mistrust thet-all
mought of hed somethin' to do with his dyin'. The doctor, he come an'
bled him every day, but he died on him, an' then he claimed hit was
the eetch, or mebbe hit wus jest his time hed come, he couldn't tell
which. I've wondered sence if mebbe we'd got a town doctor he mought
of lived. But Doctor Swanky wus a mountain man an' we wus, too, so we
taken him. But, he wus more of a hoss doctor, an' seems like, he never
did hev no luck, much, with folks."

Her nerves all a-jangle from trail-strain and the depressing
atmosphere of the Watts ranch, it seemed to Patty she must shriek
aloud if the woman persisted in her ceaseless gabble.

"Yer pa wus a nice man, an' well thought of. We-all know'd him well.
It wus goin' on three year he prospected 'round here in the hills, an'
many a time he's sot right where yo're settin' now, an' et his meal o'
vittles. Some said las' fall 'fore he went back East how he'd made his
strike, an' hit wus quartz gold, an' how he'd gone back to git money
to work hit. Mr. Bethun