“That’s him, I reckon, Katie—there comes yer husband, I’m bettin’. You said he was little and runty, slim as a blacksnake, and wiry as a watch spring. I guess you hit his trail here, all right.”
It was the sort of humor this crowd could understand, and they roared hilariously.
Pizen Kate ignored them with fine scorn, and moved toward the great scout, the men falling back before her jabbing umbrella and giving her ample room. She pranced thus up in front of Buffalo Bill, and stood eying him, umbrella in one hand and the other hand on her hip.
“I think I seen you onct,” she announced, as the scout politely lifted his big hat to her.
“Possibly,” he said, smiling.
“You’re Persimmon Pete, the gazeboo what run away with my old man.”
The crowd snickered, and then roared again.
“Hardly,” said Buffalo Bill.
“Oh, I know ye!” was her vociferous assertion. “You come to Kansas City with an Injun medicine company, and lectured and sold medicine. And my old man went to your show and seen ye; and then he got magnetized by ye, somehow, and wandered off after you when you went away. He was dead gone on big men. I suppose that was because he was so durn little and runty himself. It made him like big men. And so he follered you off when you left town. Now, ain’t that so? I know ye. You’re Persimmon Pete.”
The scout lifted his hat again, flushing slightly, for he heard the roars of the crowd.