23/24 No one but a white man--and a range man, she added to herself--would say, "Uh course I knowed yore voice." And he had not really had a cold. Mary V's ears were sharper than her dad's, for she had caught the make-believe in the hoarseness. She knew perfectly well that Johnny Jewel might be hoarse as a crow and never talk that way. Johnny never said "Uh course I knowed," and Johnny would choke before he'd ever call her sweetheart. He wouldn't have let that man do it, either, had Johnny been present in the cabin, she suspected shrewdly. |