Bill hesitated; then, with an apparent burst of confidence, he assumed his frankest manner and voice, and told his tale.
“Well,” he said, taking a fresh chew and offering his plug to his neighbor, who passed it on after helping himself, “ye see, it was like this. Ye know that little Meredith gel?”
Chorus of answers: “Yes! The red-headed one. I know! She's a daisy!—reg'lar blizzard!—lightnin' conductor!”
Bill paused, stiffened himself a little, dropped his frank air and drawled out in cool, hard tones: “I might remark that that young lady is, I might persoom to say, a friend of mine, which I'm prepared to back up in my best style, and if any blanked blanked son of a street sweeper has any remark to make, here's his time now!”
In the pause that followed murmurs were heard extolling the many excellences of the young lady in question, and Bill, appeased, yielded to the requests for the continuance of his story, and, as he described Gwen and her pinto and her work on the ranch, the men, many of whom had had glimpses of her, gave emphatic approval in their own way. But as he told of her rescue of Joe and of the sudden calamity that had befallen her a great stillness fell upon the simple, tender-hearted fellows, and they listened with their eyes shining in the firelight with growing intentness. Then Bill spoke of The Pilot and how he stood by her and helped her and cheered her till they began to swear he was “all right”; “and now,” concluded Bill, “when The Pilot is in a hole she wants to help him out.”
“O' course,” said one. “Right enough. How's she going to work it?” said another.
“Well, he's dead set on to buildin' a meetin'-house, and them fellows down at the Creek that does the prayin' and such don't seem to back him up!”
“Whar's the kick, Bill?”
“Oh, they don't want to go down into their clothes and put up for it.”
“How much?”