Angevine Thorne dropped his paper and reached stealthily for a large mail-order catalogue on the counter. "Aprons, bath-tubs, curtains, dishes," he read, running his finger down the index. "Here's some silk handkerchiefs that might suit you; 'green, red, blue, and yaller, sixty cents each; with embroidered initials, twenty cents extra.'"
"I'll go you!" cried the cowboy, looking over his shoulder. "Gimme half a dozen of them red ones—no squaw colors for me—and say, lemme look at them aprons."
"Aprons!" yelled Angy. "Well—what—the—"
"Aw, shut up!" snarled Pecos, blushing furiously. "Can't you take a joke? Here, gimme that catalogue—you ain't the only man on the Verde that can read and write—I've had some schoolin' myself!"
He retired to a dark corner with the "poor man's enemy" and pored over it laboriously, scrawling from time to time upon an order blank which Angy had thoughtfully provided. At last the deed was done, all but adding up the total, and after an abortive try or two the cowboy slipped in a twenty-dollar bill and wrote: "Giv me the rest in blue hankerchefs branded M." Then he sealed and directed the letter and called on Babe for a drink.
"How long before I'll git them things?" he inquired, his mind still heated with visions of aprons, jewelry, and blue handkerchiefs, branded M,—"two or three weeks? Well, I'll be down before then—they might come sooner. Where's all the punchers?"
"Oh, they're down in Geronimo, gettin' drunk. Round-up's over, now, and Crit laid 'em off. Gittin' kinder lonely around here."
"Lonely!" echoed Pecos. "Well, if you call this lonely you ought to be out in Lost Dog Cañon, where I am. They's nothin' stirrin' there but the turkey-buzzards—I'm gittin' the willies already, jest from listenin' to myself think. Say, come on out and see me sometime, can't you?"
"Nope," said Babe, "if you knew all the things that Crit expects me to do in a day you'd wonder how I git time to shave. But say, what you doin' out there, if it's a fair question?"
"Who—me? Oh, I've made me a little camp over in that cave and I'm catchin' them wild cattle that ooze along the creek." He tried to make it as matter-of-fact as possible, but Angevine Thorne knew better.