man like him
couldn't well be fathering an old lady like her, though it was
obliging of him to offer; but, anyway, she wasn't going straight back
East, because she had to wait awhile at Palomitas for a remittance she
was expecting to pay her way through--and she wasn't any too sure
about it, she said, whether she'd get her remittance; or, if she did
get it, when it would come. Everything bad always got down on you at
once, she said; and just as the cruel savages had slain her dear
Captain along come the news the bank East he'd put his money in had
broke the worst kind. Her financial difficulties wasn't a patch on the
trouble her sorrowing heart was giving her, she said; but she allowed
they added what she called pangs of bitterness to her deeper pain.

The old gent--he wasn't a fool clean through--asked her what was the
matter with her Government transportation; she having a right to
transportation, being an officer's widow going home. Hill said he give
her a nudge at that, as much as to say the old gent had her. She
didn't faze a bit, though. It was her Government transportation she
was waiting for, she cracked back to him smooth and natural; but such
things had to go all the way to Washington to be settled, she said,
and then come West again--Hill said he 'most snickered out at
that--and she'd known cases when red-tape had got in the way and
transportation hadn't been allowed at all. Then she sighed terrible,
and said it might be a long, long while before she could get home
again to her little boy--who was all there was left her in the world.
Her little Willy was being took care of by his grandmother, she said,
and he was just his father's own handsome self over again--and she got
out her pocket-handkerchief and jammed it up to her eyes.

[Illustration: "HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP, AND THE OLD GENT GOT
A-HOLD OF IT"]

Her left hand was laying in her lap, sort of casual, and the old gent
got a-hold of it and said he didn't know how to tell her how sorry he
was for her. Talking from behind her pocket-handkerchief, she said
such sympathy was precious; and then she went on, kind of pitiful,
saying she s'posed her little Willy'd have forgot all about her before
she'd get back to him--and she cried some more. Hill said she done it
so well he was half took in himself for a minute, and felt so bad he
went to licking and swearing at his mules.

After a while she took a brace--getting down her pocket-handkerchief,