"After the skelp dance is over, Bill an' Jim tiptoes over mighty quiet an' sedate, an' Jim takes their prey by the tail an' yanks it. After the rattlesnake's drug out straight, him an' Bill runs their eyes along him like they's sizin' him up. With this yere last, however, it's cl'ar the Road Runners regards the deal as closed. They sa'nters off down the trail, arm in arm like, conversin' in low tones so Peets an' me never does hear what they says. When they's in what they takes to be the c'rrect p'sition, they stops an' looks back at me an' Peets. Bill turns to Jim like he's sayin':
"'Thar's them two short-horns ag'in. I wonders if they ever aims to pull their freight, or do they reckon they'll pitch camp right yere?"'
CHAPTER XXII. OLD SAM ENRIGHT'S "ROMANCE."
"It mebby is, that romances comes to pass on the range when I'm thar," remarked the Old Cattleman, meditatively, "but if so be, I never notes 'em. They shorely gets plumb by me in the night."
The old gentleman had just thrown down a daily paper, and even as he spoke I read on the upturned page the glaring headline: "Romance in Real Life." His recent literature was the evident cause of his reflections.
"Of course," continued the Old Cattleman, turning for comfort to his inevitable tobacco pipe, "of course, at sech epocks as some degraded sharp takes to dealin' double in a poker game, or the kyards begins to come two at a clatter at faro-bank, the proceedin's frequent takes on what you-all might call a hue of romance; an' I admits they was likely to get some hectic, myse'f. But as I states, for what you-all would brand as clean. strain romance, I ain't recallin' none."
"How about those love affairs of your youth?" I ventured.
"Which I don't deny," replied the old gentleman, between puffs, "that back in Tennessee, as I onfolds before, I has my flower- scented days. But I don't wed nothin', as you-all knows, an' even while I'm ridin' an' ropin' at them young female persons, thar's never no romance to it, onless it's in the fact that they all escapes.