“Thus was she subdued!” Joshua shouted back.
Philip Demarest had been considerate in settling up with Shanty Madge, and to cover her indebtedness had selected such articles as would be of no use to her as a homesteader. So Madge had been permitted to help herself to commissary supplies and baled hay, and there were three more loads to be hauled after they were settled. Demarest’s thoughtfulness had made it possible for the homesteaders to fill their larder for many months to come, but there were a few things still needed, and to buy them Joshua stopped his little wagon train at Ragtown about one o’clock.
While he was watering the stock Madge made the few purchases that were necessary. It was Ragtown’s quietest hour, for the revelers were still sleeping off the drunkenness of the night before and the gambling games had not yet opened up. From the doors of saloons here and there came an occasional loud voice or a burst of throaty laughter, breaking in harshly on the mountain stillness.
As Joshua was leading his team from the trough to make room for Madge’s he saw, leaning against the corrugated-iron front of The Silver Dollar, his kid enemy of the House of Refuge, Felix Wolfgang. He was the picture of lassitude. A brown-paper cigarette hung from his lower lip. He wore a fancy striped-silk shirt and a vest made of green billiard-table topping, with six five-dollar gold pieces for buttons. The vest was open, showing the flowing ends of a black-satin tie, its knot held firm by a diamond stickpin. A broad-brimmed Stetson hat, carefully creased to a Mexican peak, looked enormous above his cadaverous face and seemed to cause his many freckles to stand out more plainly. His eyes were insolent, as always, as he gazed with half-interest at Joshua, which interest was quickened as Shanty Madge’s lithe figure came from the store and post office and crossed toward the wagons.
She was scarce ten feet from The Silver Dollar when several men appeared behind her in the door. They watched her as she crossed the street and mounted to the elevated seat beside her mother. Then a man slightly behind the rest pushed his way through and came staggering after her.
“Lee, c’mere! C’mon back here, Sweet! Get onto yerself!” called several voices in semi-guarded tones, but the man paid no heed and kept on across the road.
He was such a man as one seldom sees in cities. He was a tall, burly giant, well proportioned and with a stride that was confident for all its present wobbliness. His face was large and red, and a half-moon of leonine whiskers, coarse and curly as a frayed-out hempen rope, encompassed his jaw. He wore a Columbia-shape black Stetson, a purple-and-green-plaid flannel shirt, a black-silk neckerchief with a silver clasp, fringed leather chaps, and high-heeled cowboy boots with fancy quilted tops of morocco leather, on the counters of which hung large-roweled silver-mounted spurs. Petulant, domineering brown eyes were set deep in his unsymmetrical skull, and the corners of them displayed “sleepy men,” caused by a night of drinking and a morning of fortification against repentant hours to come.
Once more some man called to him to come back and “’tend to his own business,” but his chap-clad legs whistled on until he swayed before the astonished Joshua.
“So you’re the Ike they’re callin’ Cole of Spyglass Mountain, are ye?” he wanted to know, and he made no effort to drive sarcasm from his tones.
“I believe I’m to be called that,” Joshua replied good-naturedly. “But I didn’t know it had got around as yet.”