Knowing him as we all did afterward, we
suspected that he attempted to treat her as he treated all women--and as
I believe he could not help treating them. It seems impossible of
belief--his wife's orphan sister, the recent death of Ann Gowdy, the
girl's helplessness and she only a little girl; but Buck Gowdy was Buck
Gowdy, and that escape of his wife's sister and her flight over the
prairie was the indelible black mark against him which was pointed at
from time to 'time forever after whenever the people were ready to
forgive those daily misdoings to which a frontier people were not so
critical as perhaps they should have been. Indeed he gained a certain
popularity from his boast that all the time he needed to gain control
over any woman was half an hour alone with her--but of that later, if
at all.
"That was me that called you 'Virginia,'" said I. "I want to get into
the wagon to get things for breakfast--after you get up."
"I never thought of your calling me Virginia," she answered--and I had
no idea what was in her mind. I saw no reason why I shouldn't call her
by her first name. "Miss" Royall would have been my name for the wife of
a man named Royall. It was not until long afterward that I found out how
different my manners were from those to which she was accustomed.
I never thought of such a thing as varying from my course of conduct on
her account; and just as would have been the case if my outfit had been
a boat for which time and tide would not wait, I yoked up, after the
breakfast was done, and prepared to negotiate the miry crossing of the
creek and pull out for Monterey County, which I hoped to reach in time
to break some land and plant a small crop.
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