“Gittin’ to Bullhide this mawnin’,” drawled one of the cowboys. “An’ he’s got what he went for, too.”
“Bill Hicks most usually does git what he goes after, don’t he?” retorted the storekeeper.
The other puncher chuckled. “This time Old Bill come near goin’ out after rabbit an’ only bringin’ back the hair,” he said. “Jane Ann is just as much of a Hicks as Bill himself—you take it from me. She made her bargain b’fore Old Bill got her headed back to the ranch, I reckon. Thar’s goin’ to be more newfangled notions at Silver Ranch from now on than you kin shake a stick at. You hear me!”
“Old Bill can stand scattering a little money around as well as any man in this State,” Lem said, ruminatively. “He’s made it; he’s saved it; now he might’s well l’arn to spend some of it.”
“And he’s begun. Jane Ann’s begun for him, leastways,” said one of the cowboys. “D’ye know what Mulvey brought out on his wagon last Sat’day?”
“I knowed he looked like pitchers of ‘movin’ day’ in New York City, or Chicago, when he passed along yere,” grunted the storekeeper. “Eight head o’ mules he was drivin’.”
“He sure was,” agreed the cow puncher. “There was all sorts of trucks and gew-gaws. But the main thing was a pinanner.”
“A piano?”
“That’s what I said. And that half-Injun, Jib Pottoway, says he kin play on the thing. But it ain’t to be unboxed till the boss and Jane Ann comes.”
“And they’ll be gittin’ along yere some time to-day,” said the other cowboy, throwing his empty tin away. “And when they come, Lem, they’re sure goin’ to surprise yuh.”