Them cholos was all quiet now, and actin’ as keerful as if that rock was dynamite. Queer and shivery, they was, about it, and it kinda give me the creeps.
Next, they begun pointin’ up to the top of the Butte!
I seen what was comin’. So I used my haid–quick, so’s to stave off trouble. “Mebbe, boys,” I says, lookin’ the ground over some more, “–mebbe they was a cyclone last night to the north of here, and this blowed in from Kansas.”
The section-boss walked ’round, studyin’. “I’m from Missoura,” he says, “and it strikes me that this rock looks kinda familiar, like it was part iron. Now, mebbe they’s been a thunderin’ big explosion in the Ozark Mountains. But, Mrs. Bridger, as a native son of the ole State, I don’t want to advise you to sue fer da––”
I heerd them cholos smackin’ they lips. I looked where they was lookin’, and here, a-comin’ lickety-split, was the sheriff!
That section-boss was as good-natured a feller as ever lived, and never liked t’ think bad of no man. But the minute he seen Bergin racin’ down offen that Butte, he believed like the peons did. He turned t’ me. “By George!” he says–just like that.
Wal, sir, that “By George” done it. Soon as the Mexicans heerd him speak out what they thought, they set up a Comanche yell, and, with the whites of they eyes showin’ like a nigger’s, they made towards the sheriff on the dead run.
He kept a-comin’. Most men, seein’ a passel of locoed greasers makin’ towards ’em with pickaxes, would ’a’ turned and run, figgerin’ that leg-bail was good enough fer them. But the sheriff, he wasn’t scairt.
A second, and the Mexicans ’d made a surround. He pulled his gun. They jerked it outen his hand. He throwed ’em off.
I drawed my weapon.