"A Texas boy in a Northern clime,
With a pair of brown hands and a thin little dime.
The southeast side of his overalls out—
Yip-yip, I'm freezin' to death!"
"That's a swell song," Pinkey went on enthusiastically. "I wish I could think of the rest of it."
"Don't overtax your brain—I've heard plenty. Let's cut down the alley and in the back way of the Emporium. Oh!" He gripped his quilt in sudden panic and looked for a hiding-place. Nothing better than a telegraph pole offered. He stepped behind it as Helene Spenceley passed in Canby's roadster.
"Did she see me?"
"Shore she saw you. You'd oughta seen the way she looked at you."
Wallie, who was too mortified and miserable for words over the incident, declared he meant never again to come to town and make a fool of himself.
"I know how you feel, but you'll git over it," said Pinkey, sympathetically. "It's nothin' to worry about, for I doubt if you ever had any show anyhow."
Canby laughed disagreeably after they had passed the two on the sidewalk.
"That Montgomery-Ward cowpuncher has been drunk again, evidently," he commented.
"I wouldn't call him that. I'm told he can rope and ride with any of them."