“Oh, you'll sweat for this!” he shouted impotently when the Happy Family was placing the timbers.
“Ah, git outa the way!” said Andy, coming toward him with a crowbar. “We're sweating now, if that makes yuh feel any better.”
The man got out of the way, and went and stood with the group of onlookers, and talked vaguely of having the law on them—whatever he meant by that.
By the time they had placed the third shack in the bottom of the coulee, the sun was setting. They dragged the timbers up the steep bluff with their ropes and their saddle-horses, loaded them on to the wagon and threw the crowbars and rolling timbers in, and turned to look curiously and unashamed at their audience. Andy, still tacitly their leader, rode a few steps forward.
“That'll be all today,” he announced politely. “Except that load of lumber back here on the bench where it don't belong—we aim to haul that over the line. Seeing your considerable interest in our affairs, I'll just say that we filed on our claims according to law, and we're living on 'em according to law. Till somebody proves in court that we're not, there don't any shack, or any stock, stay on our side the line any longer than it takes to get them off. There's the signs, folks—read 'em and take 'em to heart. You can go home now. The show's over.”
He lifted his hat to the women—and there were several now—and went away to join his fellows, who had ridden on slowly till he might overtake them. He found Happy Jack grumbling and predicting evil, as it was his nature to do, but he merely straightened his aching back and laughed at the prophecies.
“As I told you before, there's more than one way to kill a cat,” he asserted tritely but never the less impressively. “Nobody can say we wasn't mild; and nobody can say we hadn't a right to get those chickencoops off our land. If you ask me, Florence Grace will have to go some now if she gets the best of the deal. She overlooked a bet. We haven't been served with any contest notices yet, and so we ain't obliged to take their say-so. Who's going to stand guard tonight? We've got to stand our regular shifts, if we want to keep ahead of the game. I'm willing to be It. I'd like to make sure they don't slip any stock across before daylight.”
“Say, it's lucky we've got a bunch of boneheads like them to handle,” Pink observed thankfully. “Would a bunch of natives have stood around like that with their hands in their pockets and let us get away with the moving job? Not so you could notice!”
“What we'd better do,” cut in the Native Son without any misleading drawl, “is try and rustle enough money to build that fence.”
“That's right,” assented Cal. “Maybe the Old Man—”