Bailey sometimes said: "Rivers would shine up to a seventy-year-old Sioux squaw if she was the only woman handy, but he don't mean anything by it—it's just his way. He's one o' the best-hearted fellers that ever lived." Others took a less favorable view of the land-agent, and refused to trust him.
Bailey assumed command. "Now, fellers," he said, "we'll vamoose the ranch while Mrs. Burke turns in." He opened the way to the store-room, and the men filed out, all but Burke, who remained to put up the calico curtain with which his wife had planned to shield her bed.
Blanche was a little disturbed at the prospect of sleeping behind such a thin barrier.
"Oh, it's no worse than the sleeping-car," her husband argued.
A little later he stuck his head in at the store-room door. "All ready, Bailey."
Bailey was to sleep on the rickety lounge, which served as bedstead and chair, and the other men were to make down as best they could in the grocery.
Bailey went out to the front of the shanty to look at the lantern he had set up on a scantling. Rivers followed him.
"Going to leave that up there all night?"
"Yes. May keep some poor devil from wandering around all night on the prairie."
Rivers said, with an abrupt change in his voice: