“Chuck it! None o’ your sass, my lad! There’s my fist. Heft it if you don’t put no stock in its looks. Git out o’ this, I say!”
The voice was big and convincing. The man wasn’t so big, but some way he looked convincing, too. The truckman stepped aside, but with plucky temerity answered back.
“Get out yourself! Think you own the whole cattle country jest ’cause you herd a few ornery, pink-eyed, slab-sided critters for your salt? Well, the railroad ain’t the range, le’ me tell you that. Jest you run your own affairs, will you?”
“Thanky. Glad to. And as my affairs is at present a lady, I’ll thank you to jest trundle this here railroad offspring to the back o’ this here lady—the back, I say—back ain’t front, is it? Wasn’t where I was eddicated. That’s better. And ef you ain’t satisfied, why, I belong to the Three Bars. Ever hear o’ the Three Bars? Ef I’m out, jest leave word with the Boss, will you? He’ll see I git the word. Yes, sir, you ol’ hoss thief, I belong to the Three Bars.”
The encounter was not without interested spectators. Louise’s brakeman was grinning broadly at the discomfiture of his fellow-employee. Louise herself had forgotten her predicament in the sudden whirlwind of which she was the innocent storm-centre.
The cowboy with the temper, having completely routed the enemy to the immense satisfaction of the onlookers, though why, no one knew exactly, nor what the merits of the case, turned abruptly to Louise.
“Are you her?” he asked, with a perceptible cooling of his assertive bravado.
“I don’t know,” said Louise, smiling fearlessly at her champion, though inwardly quaking at the intuition that had flashed upon her that this strange, uncouth man had come to take the place of Mary. “The boldness and license of the cowboys,” her aunt had argued. There could be no doubt of the boldness. Would the rest of the statement hold good?
“I think maybe I am, though I am Louise Dale, the new court reporter. I expected Miss Mary Williston to meet me.”
“Then you are her,” said the man, with renewed cheerfulness, seizing her suit-case and striding off. “Come along. We’ll git some supper afore we start. You’re dead tired, more’n likely. It’ll be moonlight so’t won’t matter ef we are late a gittin’ home.”