“Oh, Gordon? Pretty decent sort o’ chap. Right idees. Don’t know much about handlin’ hoss thieves and sich. Ain’t smooth enough. Acted kind o’ like a chicken with its head cut off till the Boss got into the roundup.”
“Oh!” said Louise, whose conception of the young counsel for the State did not tally with this delineation.
“Yep, Miss, this here’s the Boss’s doin’s. Yep. Lord! What’ll that gang look like when we are through with ’em? Spendin’ the rest o’ their days down there in Sioux Falls, meditatin’ on the advisability o’ walkin’ clear o’ the toes o’ the Three Bars in the future and cussin’ their stupendified stupidity in foolin’ even once with the Three Bars. Yep, sir—yep, ma’am, I mean,—Jesse Black and his gang have acted just like pesky, little plum’-fool moskeeters, and we’re goin’ to slap ’em. The cheek of ’em, lightin’ on the Three Bars! Lord!”
“Mr. Williston informed, did he not?”
“Williston? Oh, yes, he informed, but he’d never ’a’ done it if it hadn’t ’a’ been for the Boss. The ol’ jellyfish wouldn’t ’a’ had the nerve to inform without backin’, as sure as a stone wall. The Boss is a doin’ this, I tell you, Miss. But Williston’s a goin’ on the stand to-morrer all right, and so am I.”
The two cowboys at the corner table had long since finished their supper. They now lighted bad-smelling cigars and left the room. To Louise’s great relief, Munson rose, too. He was back very soon with a neat little runabout and a high-spirited team of bays.
“Boss’s private,” explained Jim with pride. “Nothin’ too good for a lady, so the Boss sent this and me to take keer o’ it. And o’ you, too, Miss,” he added, as an afterthought.
He held the lines in his brown, muscular hands, lovingly, while he stowed away Louise’s belongings and himself snugly in the seat, and then the blood burned hot and stinging through his bronzed, tough skin, for suddenly in his big, honest, untrained sensibilities was born the consciousness that the Boss would have stowed away the lady first. It was an embarrassing moment. Louise saved the day by climbing in unconcernedly after him and tucking the linen robe over her skirt.
“It will be a dusty drive, won’t it?” she asked, simply.
“Miss, you’re a—dandy,” said Jim as simply.