"Mind your own affairs and give me a glass," ordered Walton.
Purposely misunderstanding him, the barkeeper held out a glass of liquor and said, "You seem a leetle nervous, Walton."
The glass was struck to the counter. Walton screamed in maniacal fury, "A looking-glass is what I want, you doggone idiot! I want to gaze on my 'seraphic countenance' that seems to paralyze everybody. Look like the 'green fields of Virginia,' do I? 'Rent me out during a drouth,' will they? Where's a glass?"
"Keep calm, Walton, here's one;" the bartender handed out a small mirror.
Silently Walton gazed at hair and beard of vivid emerald green. The venomous glitter of his eyes was like that of an angry rattlesnake. He laid the glass down and spoke with a voice that was quiet, but deadly.
"Some one put Dunning up to this, and I'll find out who it was, before I get through." He flung out of the place and the men in the room glanced at one another. They knew that some day, somebody would pay. Walton was a man whose debts of personal animus, never outlawed by time, were sure to be settled in full with compound interest.
CHAPTER NINE
"The boys don't mean no harm, but it jest seems they can't come to town without things happenin' when they mix in," Limber had said when he parted from Powell.
The cowpuncher went to the corral, mounted his pony and rode down the railroad track to the shipping pens. The cattle were in good shape, gates fastened securely. No matter what the short-comings of the boys of the Diamond H, they never slighted any detail of the work; but Limber felt the responsibility of it all.