“Nor dance?”
“No.”
“Nor behave prettily to polite young men?”
Again the woman looked at him. “You ain’t so awful young, are you?”
“I amuse you, don’t I? Well, I’m not always so all-fired funny,” drawled the creature, lowering her head a little.
“No. I’ve heard that you’re not. You rather run things here, I gather; got the boys ‘plumb-scared’?”
“Did Mr. Yarnall tell you that?”
“Yes. I’ve just in the last few minutes remembered who you are. You’re Jane. You cook for the ‘outfit,’ and Yarnall was telling us the other night how he sent one of the boys out for a cook, the last one, a man, having been beaten up, and how the boy had brought you back behind him on his saddle. He said you’d kept order for him ever since, were better than a foreman. Who was the man you threw out to-night?”
“Perhaps,” drawled Jane, “he was just a feller who asked too many questions?”