“What are we to do?” asked Mr. Masterson, anxiously. “I don’t want to be understood as shirking a duty, but if I’d known there was to be any such feminine uprising as this I’d never been sheriff of Ford.”
Mr. Wright made a despairing gesture.
“I haven’t,” said Mr. Wright, “felt so he’pless an’ unprotected since Mr. Lee’s surrender.”
“What be we to do?” and Mr. Kelly repeated Mr. Masterson’s question. Then, as though making reply: “Whatever can we do? Thar’s them ladies on the warpath, an’ Aunt Nettie at their head! She’s that inflexible, granite’s easy to her! An’ as for courage, Aunt Nettie teaches it. Thar’s nothin’ she’s feared of on four legs or two.”
“Yes thar is,” interjected Cimarron Bill, who stood listening. “Which Aunt Nettie’s timid of cows.”
There was a suggestion in the remark; strung like a bow by the difficulties of the situation Mr. Masterson seized upon it. Two words to Cimarron Bill and in another moment that hard-riding gentleman and a dozen hard-riding companions were cinching the hulls onto their ponies in Mr. Trask’s corral. Once in the saddle, away they tore for the river and began scrambling across, through deeps and shallows, with dire riot and uproar.
On the south side of the river, up to their stolid knees in the rank grasses, were from fifty to one hundred head of cattle. These tossed wondering horns and blew loudly through their noses as Cimarron Bill and his mates came charging across. Their ruminations suffered further disturbance when, with headlong speed, those charging ones fell bodily upon them, rounded them up, hurled them into the river and sent them for the north bank on the jump. With bellow of protest the outraged cattle were rushed along. Once on the north bank they were cleverly bunched and, still on the canter, swung down on the office of the Weekly Planet.
The first to observe the approach of that horned phalanx, with the urgent riders whooping and dashing about in the rear, was Miss Casey of the lemon pies.
“Oh, look at them awful cows, Miss Dawson, dear!” she screamed, and pointed with horrified finger.
Not alone Aunt Nettie, but every lady looked. It was enough; there was a chorus of squeaks, a vast flutter of skirts, and the fair vigilantes, gathered to revenge their betrayed pies, had scattered like a flock of blackbirds. Aunt Nettie was the last to go. She gazed at the oncoming cattle as they swept down upon the Weekly Planet, with lowered horn and steamy nostril; she identified her recreant nephew, Cimarron Bill, and knew the whole as a masterpiece of Mastersonian diplomacy.