ver suspected it of her in
the least degree up to that time. Of course it was too late after she
was once seen off her horse. Them that didn't see was told in full
detail by them that did. Most of the others was luckier. Beryl Mae
Macomber in her sport shirt and trouserettes complained constantly about
the odious wretches along Main Street and Fourth, where the post office
was. She couldn't stop even twenty minutes in front of the post office,
minding her own business and waiting for some one she knew to come along
and get her mail for her, without having dozens of men stop and ogle
her. That, of course, was during the first two weeks after she took to
going for the mail, though the eternal feminine in Beryl Mae probably
thought the insulting glances was going to keep up forever.

"I watched the poor child one day along in the third week, waiting there
in front of the post office after the four o'clock mail, and no one
hardly ogled her at all except some rude children out from school. What
made it more pitiful, leaning right there against the post office front
was Jack Shiels, Sammie Hamilton, and little old Elmer Cox, Red Gap's
three town rowdies that ain't done a stroke of work since the canning
factory closed down the fall before, creatures that by rights should
have been leering at the poor child In all her striking beauty. But, no;
the brutes stand there looking at nothing much until Jack Shiels stares
a minute at this horse Beryl Mae is on and pipes up: 'Why, say, I
thought Pierce let that little bay runt go to the guy that was in here
after polo ponies last Thursday. I sure did.' And Sam Hamilton wakes up
and says: 'No, sir; not this one. He got rid of a little mare that had
shoulders like this, but she was a roan with kind of mule ears and one
froze off.' And little old Elmer Cox, ignoring this defenceless young
girl with his impudent eyes, he says: 'Yes, Sam's right for once. Pierce
tried to let this one go, too, but ain't you took a look at his hocks!'
Then along comes Dean Duke, the ratty old foreman in Pierce's stable,
and he don't ogle a bit, either, like you'd expect one of his debased
calibre to, but just stops and talks this horse over with 'em and says
yes, it was his bad hocks that lost the sale, and he tells 'em how he
had told Pierce just what to do to get him shaped up for a quick sale,
but Pierce wouldn't listen to him, thinking he knew it all himself; and
there the four stood and gassed about this