"The hell he does! Lookin' that way? Well, I don't think. It's his brass-bound cheek. Wait till we ketch him alone."
Cal appeared at the door. "Well, fellers, come in; grub's all spread out."
"What you got to say about it?" asked Green.
"Think you're the nigger that rings the bell, don't ye?" remarked Galvin. "We're waitin' for the boss to say 'when.'"
Not one of them stirred till Curtis rose, saying to the sheriff, "Well, we'll take time later to discuss that; come right out and tame the wolf."
The fact that Curtis accepted Calvin's call impressed the crowd deeply.
"You'd think he was one o' the fambly," muttered Galvin. "Wait till we get a rope 'round his neck."
The table, looking cool and dainty in its fleckless linen, was set with plates of cold chicken and ham, with pots of jelly and white bread at each end of the cloth, beside big pitchers of cool milk. To the cowboys, accustomed only to their rude camps and the crude housekeeping of the settlers round about, this dainty cleanliness of dining-room was marvellously subduing. They shuffled into their seats noisily, with only swift, animal-like glances at the girls, who were bubbling over with the excitement of feeding this band of Cossacks.
As they drank their milk and fed great slices of bread and jelly into their mouths, fighting Indians seemed less necessary than they had supposed. Whiskey and alkali dust, and the smell of sweating ponies, were all forgotten in the quiet and sweetness of this pretty home. The soft answer had turned wrath into shamefaced wonder and awkward courtesy.
Curtis, sitting at the head of the board as host, plied the sheriff with cold chicken, discussing meanwhile the difficulties under which the Tetongs labored, and drew from that sorely beleaguered officer admissions which he afterwards regretted. "That's so, I don't know as I'd do any better in their places, but—"