night yu wouldn’t be here eatin’ beef by th’ pound,” glancing at the hard-working Hopalong. “It was plum lucky fer yu that they was acourtin’ that time, wasn’t it, Hopalong?” suddenly asked Red. Hopalong nearly strangled in his efforts to speak. He gave it up and nodded his head.
“Why can’t yu git it straight, Connors? I wasn’t doin’ no courtin’, it was Pete. I runned into him on th’ other side o’ th’ pass. I’d look fine acourtin’, wouldn’t I?” asked the downtrodden Williams.
Pete Wilson skillfully flipped a potato into that worthy’s coffee, spilling the beverage of the questionable name over a large expanse of blue flannel shirt. “Yu’s all right, yu are. Why, when I meets yu, yu was lost in th’ arms of yore ladylove. All I could see was yore feet. Go an’ git tangled up with a two hundred and forty pound half-breed squaw an’ then try to lay it onter me! When I proposed drownin’ yore troubles over at Cowan’s, yu went an’ got mad over what yu called th’ insinooation. An’ yu shore didn’t look any too blamed fine, neither.”
“All th’ same,” volunteered Thompson, who had taken the edge from his appetite, “we better go over an’ pay C-80 a call. I don’t like what Shorty said about saltin’ our cattle. He’ll shore do it, unless I camps on th’ line, which same I hain’t hankerin’ after.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t stop th’ cows that way, Skinny; he was only afoolin’,” exclaimed Connors meekly.
“Foolin’ yore gran’mother! That there bunch’ll do anything if we wasn’t lookin’,” hotly replied Skinny.
“That’s shore nuff gospel, Thomp. They’s sore fer mor’n one thing. They got aplenty when Buck went on th’ warpath, an they’s hankerin’ to git square,” remarked Johnny Nelson, stealing the pie, a rare treat, of his neighbor when that unfortunate individual was not looking. He had it halfway to his mouth when its former owner, Jimmy Price, a boy of eighteen, turned his head and saw it going.
“Hi-yi! Yu clay-bank coyote, drap thet pie! Did yu ever see such a son-of-a-gun fer pie?” he plaintively asked Red Connors, as he grabbed a mighty handful of apples and crust. “Pie’ll kill yu some day, yu bob-tailed jack! I had an uncle that died onct. He et too much pie an’ he went an’ turned green, an so’ll yu if yu don’t let it alone.”
“Yu ought’r seed th’ pie Johnny had down in Eagle Flat,” murmured Lanky Smith reminiscently. “She had feet that’d stop a stampede. Johnny was shore loco about her. Swore she was the finest blossom that ever growed.” Here he choked and tears of laughter coursed down his weather-beaten face as he pictured her. “She was a dainty Mexican, about fifteen han’s high an’ about sixteen han’s around. Johnny used to chalk off when he hugged her, usen’t yu, Johnny? One night when he had got purty well around on th’ second lap he run inter a feller jest startin’ out on his fust. They hain’t caught that Mexican yet.”
Nelson was pelted with everything in sight. He slowly wiped off the pie crust and bread and potatoes. “Anybody’d think I was a busted grub wagon,” he grumbled. When he had fished the last piece of beef out of his ear he went out and offered to stand treat. As the round-up was over, they slid into their saddles and raced for Cowan’s saloon at Buckskin.
CHAPTER II.
The Rashness of Shorty
Buckskin was very hot; in fact it was never anything else. Few people were on the streets and the town was quiet. Over in the Houston hotel a crowd of cowboys was lounging in the barroom. They were very quiet—a condition as rare as it was ominous. Their mounts, twelve in all, were switching flies from their quivering skins in the corral at the rear. Eight of these had a large C-80 branded on their flanks; the other four, a Double Arrow.
In the barroom a slim, wiry man was looking out of the dirty window up the street at Cowan’s saloon. Shorty was complaining, “They shore oughter be here now. They rounded up last week.” The man nearest assured him that they would come. The man at the window turned and said, “They’s yer now.”
In front of Cowan’s a crowd of nine happy-go-lucky, daredevil riders were sliding from their saddles. They threw their reins over the heads of their mounts and filed in to the bar. Laughter issued from the open door and the clink of glasses could be heard. They stood in picturesque groups, strong, self-reliant, humorous, virile. Their expensive sombreros were pushed far back on their heads and their hairy chaps were covered with the alkali dust from their ride.
Cowan, bottle in hand, pushed out several more glasses. He kicked a dog from under his feet and looked at Buck. “Rounded up yet?” he inquired.
“Shore, day afore yisterday,” came the reply. The rest were busy removing the dust from their throats, and gradually drifted into groups of two or three. One of these groups strolled over to the solitary card table, and found Jimmy Price resting in a cheap chair, his legs on the table.
“I wisht yu’d extricate yore delicate feet from off’n this hyar table, James,” humbly requested Lanky Smith, morally backed up by those with him.
“Ya-as, they shore is delicate, Mr. Smith,” responded Jimmy without moving.
“We wants to play draw, Jimmy,” explained Pete.
“Yore shore welcome to play if yu wants to. Didn’t I tell yu when yu growed that mustache that yu didn’t have to ask me any more?” queried the placid James, paternally.
“Call ‘em off, sonny. Pete sez he kin clean me out. Anyhow, yu kin have the fust deal,” compromised Lanky.
“I’m shore sorry fer Pete if he cayn’t. Yu don’t reckon I has to have fust deal to beat yu fellers, do yu? Go way an’ lemme alone; I never seed such a bunch fer buttin’ in as yu fellers.”
Billy Williams returned to the bar. Then he walked along it until he was behind the recalcitrant possessor of the table. While his aggrieved friends shuffled their feet uneasily to cover his approach, he tiptoed up behind Jimmy and, with a nod, grasped that indignant individual firmly by the neck while the others grabbed his feet. They carried him, twisting and bucking, to the middle of the street and deposited him in the dust, returning to the now vacant table.
Jimmy rested quietly for a few seconds and then slowly arose, dusting the alkali from him.
“Th’ wall-eyed piruts,” he muttered, and then scratched his head for a way to “play hunk.” As he gazed sorrowfully at the saloon he heard a snicker from behind him. He, thinking it was one of his late tormentors, paid no attention to it. Then a cynical, biting laugh stung him. He wheeled, to see Shorty leaning against a tree, a sneering leer on his flushed face. Shorty’s right hand was suspended above his holster, hooked to his belt by the thumb—a favorite position of his when expecting trouble.
“One of yore reg’lar habits?” he drawled.
Jimmy began to dust himself in silence, but his lips were compressed to a thin white line.
“Does they hurt yu?” pursued the onlooker.
Jimmy looked up. “I heard tell that they make glue outen cayuses, sometimes,” he remarked.
Shorty’s eyes flashed. The loss of the horse had been rankling in his heart all day.
“Does they git yu frequent?” he asked. His voice sounded hard.
“Oh,
