"I'm looking rather seedy now, while holding down my claim, And my grub it isn't always served the best, And the mice play shyly round me as I lay me down to rest In my little old sod shanty on my claim.
Oh, the hinges are of leather and the windows have no glass, And the roof it lets the howling blizzards in, And I hear the hungry kiote as he sneaks up through grass--"Say! have they got down the hill yet, Pink;"
Pink took his cigarette from his fingers, leaned and peered cautiously through the grimy window. "Unh-huh.
They're coming up the flat."
Whereupon Andy Green, ostentatiously washing his breakfast dishes, skipped two or three verses and lifted his voice in song to fit the occasion.
"How I wish that some kind-hearted girl would pity on me take, And relieve me of the mess that I am in!
Oh, the angel, how I'd bless her if her home with me she'd make, In my little old sod shanty--"Got her yet?" And he craned his neck to look. "Aw, they've pulled up, out there, listening!"
"My clothes are plastered o'er with dough, I'm looking like a fright, And everything is scattered round the room--"
"Why don't yuh stop that caterwauling?" Pink demanded fretfully. "You'll queer the whole play if you keep it up.
They'll swear you're drunk!"
There was sense in that. Andy finished the line about remaining two happy lovers in his little old sod shanty, and went to the door with the dishpan. He threw out the water, squeezed the dishrag in one hand and gave the inside of the pan a swipe before he appeared to discover that Miss Allen and Florence Grace Hallman were riding up to his door. As a matter of fact, he had seen them come over the top of the bluff and had long ago guessed who they were.
He met them with a smile of surprised innocence, and invited them inside. They refused to come, and even Miss Allen showed a certain reproachful coolness toward him. Andy felt hurt at that, but he did not manifest the fact. Instead he informed them that it was a fine morning. And were they out taking a look around?
They were. They were looking up the men who had perpetrated the outrage last night upon four settlers.
"Outrage?" Andy tilted the dishpan against the cabin wall, draped the dishrag over the handle and went forward, pulling down his sleeves. "What outrage is that, Miss Hallman?
Anybody killed?"
Miss Hallman watched him with her narrowed glance. She saw the quick glance he gave Miss Allen, and her lids narrowed still more. So that was it! But she did not swerve from her purpose, for all this unexpected thrust straight to the heart of her self-love.
"You know that no one was killed. But you damaged enough property to place you on the wrong side of the law, Mr. Green. Not one of those shacks can be gotten out of the gulch except in pieces!"
Andy smiled inside his soul, but his face was bewildered; his eyes fixed themselves blankly upon her face. "Me? Damaging property? Miss Hallman, you don't know me yet! "Which was perfectly true. "What shacks are you talking about? In what gulch? All the shacks I've seen so far have been stuck up on bald pinnacles where the blizzards will hit 'em coming and going next winter." He glanced again at Miss Allen with a certain sympathetic foretaste of what she would suffer next winter if she stayed in her shack.
"Don't try to play innocent, Mr. Green." Florence Grace Hallman drew her brows together. "We all know perfectly well who dragged those shacks off the claims last night."
"Don't you mean that you think you know? I'm afraid you've kinda taken it for granted I'd be mixed up in any deviltry you happened to hear about. I've got in bad with you--I know that--but just the same, I hate to be accused of everything that takes place in the country. All this is sure interesting news to me. Whereabouts was they taken from? And when, and where to? Miss Allen, you'll tell me the straight of this, won't you? And I'll get my hoss and you'll show me what gulch she's talking about, won't you?"
Miss Allen puckered her lips into a pout which meant indecision, and glanced at Florence Grace Hallman. And Miss Hallman frowned at being shunted into the background and referred to as she, and set her teeth into her lower lip.
"Miss Allen prefers to choose her own company," she said with distinct rudeness. "Don't try to wheedle her--you can't do it. And you needn't get your horse to ride anywhere with us, Mr. Green. It's useless. I just wanted to warn you that nothing like what happened last night will be tolerated. We know all about you Flying U men--you Happy Family." She said it as if she were calling them something perfectly disgraceful. "You may be just as tough and bad a you please--you can't frighten anyone into leaving the country or into giving up one iota of their rights. I came to you because you are undoubtedly the ring-leader of the gang." She accented gang. "You ought to be shot for what you did last night. And if you keep on--" She left the contingency to his imagination.
"Well, if settling up the country means that men are going to be shot for going to bed at dark and asleeping till sun-up, all I've got to say is that things ain't like they used to be. We were all plumb peaceful here till your colony came, Miss Hallman. Why, the sheriff never got out this way often enough to know the trails! He always had to ask his way around. If your bunch of town mutts can't behave themselves and leave each other alone, I don't know what's to be done about it. We ain't hired to keep the peace."
"No, you've been hired to steal all the land you can and make all the trouble you can. We understand that perfectly."
Andy shook his head in meek denial, and with a sudden impulse turned toward the cabin. "Oh, Pink!" he called, and brought that boyish-faced young man to the door, his eyes as wide and as pure as the eyes of a child.
Pink lifted his hat with just the proper degree of confusion to impress the girls with his bashfulness and his awe of their presence. His eyes were the same pansy-purple as when the Flying U first made tumultuous acquaintance with him.
