"Hoorah!" shouted Dakota, when the moving speck had vanished over the ridge.
"Hoorah!" responded a half-dozen voices; and the Dude and Alkali seized each other for a musicless dance.
"Dassent leave her t'yore tender mercies, Dakota, ole sport," chaffed Alkali. "Yo're a reg'lar lady-killer, that's what yo are."
"Oh, I dunno," grunted the Dude jealously, buttoning the loose front of his brilliant vest. "There's others."
"Go 'long with you, Dude," jeered General. "She never looks at you. Jest about two days o' Dakota's slippery manners, and the missus ud be shore climbing his neck."
Bean Slade unwound his lanky legs from a chair and spat through the doorway.
"Yer a tarnation liar, Gin'ral. Not a doggone neck ud the missus climb that she hadn't oughter. An' you're a dang lot o' sap-heads to talk it."
"You oughter know, Bean," grinned General. "Y'ain't licking her pots fer nothing, I bet."
Bean was on his feet so quickly that no one else had moved by the time a chair whirled aloft in his hands. General slid to the cover of the table in desperate haste.
Dakota flung himself between them.