"Puh! Don't y' s'pose I know that horse an' those bells—Miss Moss, allow me"——He helped her out with elaborate courtesy. "The supper and the old folks are here, and the girls and boys and the fun is over to Dudley's," he explained as he helped Bettie out.
"I'll be back soon's I put my horse up," said Milton to Bettie. "You go in and get good 'n' warm, and then we'll go over to the house."
"I saved a place in the barn for you, Milt. I knew you'd never let Marc stand out in the snow," said Shephard as he sprang in beside Milton.
"I knew you would. What's the news? Is Ed here t'night?"
"Yeh-up. On deck with S'fye Kinney. It'll make him swear when he finds out who Bettie come with."
"Let him. Are the Yohe boys here?"
"Yep. They're alwiss on hand, like a sore thumb. Bill's been drinking, and is likely to give Ed trouble. He never'll give Bettie up without a fight. Look out he don't jump onto your neck."
"No danger o' that," said Milton coolly.
The Yohe boys were strangers in the neighborhood. They had come in with the wave of harvest help from the South and had stayed on into the winter, making few friends and a large number of enemies among the young men of "the crick." Everybody admitted that they had metal in them, for they instantly paid court to the prettiest girls in the neighborhood, without regard to any prior claims.
And the girls were attracted by these Missourians, their air of mysterious wickedness and their muscular swagger, precisely as a flock of barnyard fowl are interested in the strange bird thrust among them.