She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for eight in the morning.  Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph called her to the front room, and Billy’s young mind shifted to inquiries about the cipher alphabet.  And she gained at least an hour teaching him to read various words by the sound.  At dinner, too, he was refreshingly silent.  But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was still bad.  Four o’clock found them much where they had been at eight.

“Please tell me why you won’t leave Lin marry you.”  He was at the window, kicking the wall.

“That’s nine times since dinner,” she replied, with tireless good humor.  “Now if you ask me twelve—­”

“You’ll tell?” said the boy, swiftly.

She broke into a laugh.  “No.  I’ll go riding and you’ll stay at home.  When I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me three times.”

“I’ve got two more, anyway.  Ha-ha!”

“Better save ’em up, though.”

“What did they do to you?  Ah, I don’t want to go a-riding.  It’s nasty all over.”  He stared out at the day against which Separ’s doors had been tight closed since morning.  Eight hours of furious wind had raised the dust like a sea.  “I wish the old train would come,” observed Billy, continuing to kick the wall.  “I wish I was going somewheres.”  Smoky, level, and hot, the south wind leapt into Separ across five hundred unbroken miles.  The plain was blanketed in a tawny eclipse.  Each minute the near buildings became invisible in a turbulent herd of clouds.  Above this travelling blur of the soil the top of the water-tank alone rose bulging into the clear sun.  The sand spirals would lick like flames along the bulk of the lofty tub, and soar skyward.  It was not shipping season.  The freight-cars stood idle in a long line.  No cattle huddled in the corrals.  No strangers moved in town.  No cow-ponies dozed in front of the saloon.  Their riders were distant in ranch and camp.  Human noise was extinct in Separ.  Beneath the thunder of the sultry blasts the place lay dead in its flapping shroud of dust.  “Why won’t you tell me?” droned Billy.  For some time he had been returning, like a mosquito brushed away.

“That’s ten times,” said Jessamine, promptly.

“Oh, goodness!  Pretty soon I’ll not be glad I came.  I’m about twiced as less glad now.”

“Well,” said Jessamine, “there’s a man coming to-day to mend the government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney.  Maybe he would take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much.  Shall I ask him?”

Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood.  He did not make a direct rejoinder.  “I guess I’ll go outside now,” said he, with a threat in his tone.

She continued mending his stockings.  Finished ones lay rolled at one side of her chair, and upon the other were more waiting her attention.

“And I’m going to turn back hand-springs on top of all the freight-cars,” he stated, more loudly.