So the two men, their appetites sharpened by a night spent in searching
for the fugitive, took their way down toward the village, and it was not
long thereafter that Pearl, having secured permission to go up to the
cabin and make some changes in her clothing, wearily climbed the hill.
The lacks in her costume had been temporarily supplied by the
inn-keeper's wife, but these makeshifts irked her fastidious spirit.
She had suggested that Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas go with her, but
they were too thoroughly enjoying the limelight in which they found
themselves to consider trudging up to their isolated cabin. Mrs. Thomas,
in a pink glow of excitement, cooed and smiled and fluttered her lashes
at half a dozen admirers, while Mrs. Nitschkan recounted to an
interested group just where and how she had shot her bears.
"Say, have you took in the sheriff?" Mrs. Thomas found occasion to
whisper to Mrs. Nitschkan. "He's an awful good looker, an' I think he
got around that hall so stylish last night."
"What eyes he's got ain't for you," answered the gypsy cruelly. "He's
kept his lamps steady on Pearl."
"That's all you know about it," returned Mrs. Thomas with some spirit.
"He sat beside me at the table this morning and squeezed my hand twice
when I passed him the flap-jacks. He's a real man, he is, an' likes a
woman to be a woman, an' not a grizzly bear like you or a black panther
like that Pearl."
Pearl's progress up the hill was necessarily slow.
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