Louis L'Amour by The Cherokee Trail Page B

thank you for speaking up for Wat.”
    “He’d do as much for me,” Boone said lightly. “After all, he’s one of the few of us who is really ‘western.’ Everybody out here is from somewhere else.”
    “You, too, Mr. Boone?”
    He ignored the question. “Seen you unloadin’ some books. Do you read books like that?”
    “I do.”
    “Never read me many books.” He paused, embarrassed. “Always figured to, sometime. I seen a few around. One time, a long while back, I worked some in a store back in Missouri. They had all manner of books. Folks goin’ West used to buy ’em. I just couldn’t believe there was so many folks who not only could read but wanted to.”
    “If one has a book, Mr. Boone, one is never alone. They will talk to you when you want to listen, and when you tire of what they are saying, you just close the book. It will be waiting for you when you come back to it.”
    He pushed back from the table. “I’d better get the team ready. The stage will be comin’ in.”
    When he left, trailed by Wat, she looked after him. “He’s a strange man, Matty.”
    “Good-lookin’, too,” Matty said, her expression innocent. “He’s a fine figure of a man.”
    “I suppose so. My husband was, too, and I miss him, Matty.”
    “You’re a young woman.”
    Mary flashed her a quick look. “I wasn’t thinking of that. Marshall was a wonderful man. I doubt if I should ever be so lucky again.”
    “The odds would seem to be against it, ma’am, but some women just seem to attract the good men. Others just attract the good-lookin’ rascals.”
    She went to the stove. “I’ll just warm up some of that stew. It is a wet, unpleasant morning.”
    Mary walked to the window and looked down the road. Since arriving, she had been nowhere, done nothing but get the station and the cottage into some kind of shape and find her way in a strange situation. When the weather cleared, she would get a horse and ride down the valley. Or she might even go into Laporte.
    It was an old town, although small. Once it had been mentioned as a possible state capital, but Denver had grown rapidly after the gold discoveries. Yet a visit to Laporte was an essential. There were things she needed and some she could no longer do without. Also, she needed a hostler here at the station. Boone was just helping until they got settled.
    The rain on the roof was a pleasant sound. Matty opened the stove and added some fuel. They used the fireplace only occasionally now, although she had always loved an open fire.
    Her thoughts returned to the events of the morning. What did those men want with Wat? Williams, she gathered, was a man of doubtful character, probably an outlaw. And who
was
Wat? The man called Johnny, of whom they had spoken, was obviously not his father, yet what was the connection? She must ask Boone. He would probably tell her nothing, for these western men were oddly reticent about talking of each other unless they had something good to say.
    She
was
lonely. Until now, she had been too busy to think of such things, certainly to think of herself. She was lonely for someone with whom she could talk, not just of horses, the station, or of the people here but of books, music, the greater, wider world. Not necessarily, she realized, a better world.
    There was little leisure here, little time for self-examination or things concerned with the self. People here were, for good or ill, too busy doing things, living, building, creating in a physical sense. There was almost no backbiting, little gossip as such. What talk there was concerned events, people, cattle, horses, the prospects in any one of a dozen fields. Nobody seemed to be sitting still; nobody had empty hands. There were some who might only be stirring up dust, but they were trying.
    She must not allow herself to stagnate. There were books, as Temple Boone had reminded her, and she should read to Peg, and to Wat, for that matter. Standing by the window looking out on the