She leaned toward him, and Jim, being more terrified than he had ever been, murmured something inarticulate about "not being a lady's man." What he would have done to effect his escape he was never afterward able to decide. A spell of helplessness was upon him, when suddenly a heavy step was heard outside and Pa Hoomer's voice calling:
"Ma, Ma! Who's left that corral gate open?"
Lou-Jane sprang up, shook her bright hair from her flushed face, and with a hasty apology went to meet her father. The Preacher also rose with inexpressible relief, and, after a hurried farewell, he mounted and rode away.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Second Bylow Spree
Woman to-day reverences physical prowess just as much as did her cave forebears, and she glories in the fact that her man is a strong, fighting animal, even though she recognizes the value of other gifts.
Belle was no exception to this human rule; and her eyes sparkled as she listened to Jim's story of that unusual prayer meeting held in the Bylow cabin. It was Hartigan's nature always to see the humorous side of things, and his racy description of the big man with the knife, down on his knees with one eye on the door and the other on the Preacher, was irresistible, much funnier than the real thing. It gave her a genuine thrill, a woman's pleasure in his splendid physical strength.
"Sure," he said with his faint delicious brogue, "it was distasteful to have to annoy them, but there are times when one has to do what he doesn't like."
Then he proceeded to a graphic account of the second ruffian smelling the palms of his hands and squinting through his fingers, praying for grace with his lips and for a club with his heart.