Still, that mother of Amos’ had brightened things up more or less, so that it could be seen the hand of a woman was around. A small garden lay back of the house, surrounded by a wire fence to keep animals from devouring the precious green stuff which was grown there.
Several dogs started toward them with yelps and deep-throated barking; and Jimmy unconsciously reached out a hand for the Marlin that was fastened to the pack of his burro. Jimmy’s dislike for wolves was shared by dogs of all kinds. He said it must have been born in him, since he could not remember ever having had any desperate adventure with canine foes while a kid.
Amos, however, threw oil on the troubled waters and, at the sound of his voice, the fury of the dogs changed instantly to a noisy greeting. They jumped up and fawned on the kid in a way that told how much they loved him. And, doubtless, instinct told each beast that those in company of the young master must also be friends; for, when Ned whistled and snapped his fingers, one of the dogs immediately started to approach, wagging his tail in a neighborly way.
A small-sized woman had come out of the dugout and stood there with a hand shading her eyes, as though to see who might be approaching. Ned noticed that she carried a shotgun in her other hand, and it struck him that a woman who might often be left at home alone in this strange country had need of knowing how to use some sort of firearm.
She looked very meek and did not seem to have very much snap and go about her. When Amos introduced the boys and told what a great favor they had done him, she went around shaking hands in an odd way; but evidently Mrs. Adams differed from the vast majority of her sex, for she did not seem to have much to say.
“Gee! what a shame!” Jimmy muttered in Ned’s ear.
“What is?” asked the scout master, also in a whisper.
“That’s always the way it goes,” continued the observing Jimmy, “seems like there never was a shrinking little woman, as timid as they make ’em, but what she had to go and link herself with some big bully of a blustering man. Opposites seem to attract in this world; you’ve seen a speck of a girl pick out the tallest feller she could find, and the other way, too.”
“Yes, it does look like that, Jimmy,” admitted Ned, as he tried to discover some trace of spunk about the little woman, and utterly failed.
“Chances are,” Jimmy continued, in his reflective way, “that when this bad man of a Hy Adams, the worst case along the whole border, they say, gets on one of his tearin’ fits, he just makes Rome howl. And say, I can just see that poor timid little thing cowering down like a scared puppy when it hears its master raging. But, then, mebbe Amos he hangs around to sort of protect his maw; though it don’t seem as if a small chap like him could do much along that line.”