“Court reporter! I’ll be doggoned!” muttered the brakeman. “The new girl from down East. A pore little white lamb among a pack o’ wolves and coyotes, and homesick a’ready. No wonder! I’ll be takin’ you back to-morrow, I’m thinkin’, young lady.”
He didn’t know the “little white lamb” who had come to help Paul Langford and Dick Gordon in their big fight.
[CHAPTER IV—“MAGGOT”]
An hour prior to this little episode, Jim Munson had sauntered up to the ticket window only to find that the train from the East was forty minutes late. He turned away with a little shrug of relief. It was a foreign role he was playing,—this assumption of the duties of a knight in dancing attendance on strange ladies. Secretly, he chafed under it; outwardly, he was magnificently indifferent. He had a reputation to sustain, a reputation of having yet to meet that which would lower his proud boast that he was afraid of nothing under the sun, neither man nor devil. But he doubted his ability so to direct the point of view of the Boss or the Scribe or the rest of the boys of the Three Bars ranch, who were on a still hunt for his spot of vulnerability.
The waiting-room was hot,—unbearably so to a man who practically lived in the open. He strolled outside and down the tracks. He found himself wishing the train had been on time. Had it been so, it—the impending meeting—would now have been a thing of the forgotten past. He must needs fortify himself all over again. But sauntering down the track toward the stockyards, he filled his cob pipe, lighted it, and was comforted. He had a forty-minute reprieve.
The boys had tried most valiantly to persuade him to “fix up” for this event. He had scorned them indignantly. If he was good enough as he was—black woollen shirt, red neckerchief and all—for men, just so was he good enough for any female that ever lived. So he assumed a little swagger as he stepped over the ties, and tried to make himself believe that he was glad he had not allowed himself to be corrupted by proffers of blue shirts and white neckerchiefs.
He was approaching the stockyards. There was movement there. Sounds of commands, blows, profane epithets, and worried bawlings changed the placid evening calm into noisy strife. It is always a place interesting to cowmen. Jim relegated thoughts of the coming meeting to the background while he leaned on the fence, and, with idle absorption, watched the loading of cattle into a stock car. A switch engine, steaming and spluttering, stood ready to make way for another car so soon as the present one should be laden. He was not the only spectator. Others were before him. Two men strolled up to the side opposite as he settled down to musing interest.
“Gee!” he swore gently under his breath, “ef that ain’t Bill Brown! Yep. It is, for a fac’. Wonder what he’s a shippin’ now for!” He scrambled lightly over the high fence of the pen.
“Hullo, there, Bill Brown!” he yelled, genially, making his way as one accustomed through the bunch of reluctant, excited cattle.
“Hullo yourself, Jim! What you doin’ in town?” responded the man addressed, pausing in his labor to wipe the streaming moisture from his face. He fanned himself vigorously with his drooping hat while he talked.