At this present moment he appeared especially well pleased with his own self-cast horoscope. There was a kind of proud proprietary aura all about him.
The watcher inside the tent saw a caressing arm slip from about his daughter’s body and he caught the sounds but did not make out the sense of words that passed between them. Then the two silhouettes swung apart and the boy laughed contentedly and flung an arm aloft in a parting salute and began singing a catch as he went teetering off toward the spot where his mates of the outfit already were making the low tilt of a tarpaulin roof above them pulse to some very sincere snoring. But before she betook herself to quarters, the girl bided for a long minute on the verge of the cliff and looked off and away into the studded void beyond her. She seemed to be checking up on the minor stars to see whether any of them were missing. But her father knew better than that. The sidewise cant of her head showed that one of the things she did was to listen while her late companion served due notice on the night to such effect as this:
“You monkey with my Lulu,
Tell you what I’ll do:
Take out a gun and shoot you,
And carve you plenty too!”
Mr. Gatling drew the flaps together in an abstracted way and mmphed several times.
“Pretty dog-gone spry-looking young geezer at that,” he remarked absently. “Yes, sir, pretty spry-looking.”
“Who?”
“Him.”
“You actually mean that cowboy?”
“None other than which.”
“Oh, Hector! That—that vulgarian, that country bumpkin, that clodhopper!”