By the time the sun was setting the papered room was pronounced a thorough success, and Mrs. Burns made her way to the stables followed by four cowboys whose hair and clothes spattered with dry paste, testified to an honest day's labour.
Mrs. Burns surveyed them as she picked up the reins, ready to start home, while Limber mounted Peanut to accompany her. It was eight miles to Eureka Springs.
"I've heard of lost prospectors eating their boots," she said, "but if you boys ate your clothes, you would need anti-fat. Tell the Boss I will be over soon to call on the bride. Adios!" and with a flourish of the whip she drove away, followed by the gratitude of the paste-daubed, tired group.
It required numerous trips to the kitchen for buckets of hot water before the boys removed the greater part of the concoction that clung tenaciously to faces, hands and hair; then began a more vigorous attack on their boots and clothes.
"It's durned lucky that Bronc disremembered about the glue," congratulated Roarer. "We'd a never got that off."
Bronco slumped into a rickety chair, tipping it against the wall to ease its weakest leg, "It takes a woman to round up a stampede like our'n and get the bunch headed right when it gets to millin'. I'm derned glad the Boss is married, for this outfit needs female purtection."
"I never worked so hard in my life," sighed Holy, flopping on his bunk.
Bronco grinned across the room. "Ain't you forgot the time you wrote a letter to Bill Johnson's sister? You sure worked that time—Set around the bunkhouse till daylight tearin' up paper."
"Well, she asked all of us to write her," snapped Holy, "but none of you fellers had the nerve to do it, and when you bet I couldn't, I called your bluff and won out, didn't I?"
"You sure did," agreed the others, recalling the historic missive which had been read aloud and duly admired before it was mailed.