The men drank their whiskey. They were slowly developing a certain enthusiasm over the new girl. Constraint was gone. They lounged easily against the bar. Two stood out near the middle of the floor, where they could see better, their arms across each other's shoulders. Molly touched her lips to her glass, and handed it to Billy, who stood on the other side of her. "Drink it for me," she whispered confidentially in his ear.
"It'll make me drunk," he said in mock objection. She looked incredulous. "You have touched it with yore lips," he explained sentimentally, and drank to cover his confusion. He felt elated. He had made a pretty speech, too.
The girl laughed and put her hand caressingly on his shoulder. At either knee was one of these great men; about were many others, all looking at her with admiration, waiting for her words. This was triumph! This was power! And then she looked up and found Graham's calm gray eyes fixed on her in quizzical amusement. She turned away impatiently and began to talk.
Never was such airy persiflage heard in a mining camp before. The prospectors were dissolved in a continual grin, exploded in a perpetual guffaw. Now they understood the charm of woman's conversation, which Moroney had so often extolled. They spared a thought to wish that Moroney were here to take part in this. "Moroney can do such elegant horsing," they said. What a pair this would be! How she glanced from one member to the other of the group with her witty speeches! She rapped each man's knuckles hard, to the delight of all the rest, and yet the fillip left no pain, but only a pleasant glow. They laughed consumedly.
And then, after a little, she asked them if they could sing; and without waiting for a reply, she struck up a song of her own in a high, sweet voice. With a gripping of the heart and a catching of the breath, they recognized the air. Not one man there had ever heard its words in a woman's voice before. It was "Sandy Land," the universal, the endless, the beloved, the song that brings back to every Westerner visions of other times when he has sung it, and other places—the night herd, the camp fire, the trail. With the chorus there came a roar as every man present sang out the heart that was in him. The girl was surrounded in an instant. This was the moment of which she had dreamed. She half closed her eyes, and laughed with the gurgling over-note of a triumphant child.
Cheyenne Harry straightened from his lounging position at the girl's left, slipped his arm about her waist, and kissed her full upon the lips.
The room suddenly became very still. Peter could be heard scratching his neck with stiffened hind leg behind the stove. Graham half started from his seat, but sank back as he saw the girl's face. Mike never stirred or missed a puff on his short pipe.
The girl paled a little, and, putting her hands behind her, slid carefully off the edge of the bar to the floor. Then she walked with quick firm steps to the offender and slapped him vigorously, first on one side of the head, then on the other. He raised his elbows to defend his ears, whereupon she reached swiftly forward under his arm and slipped his pistol from its open holster; after which she retreated slowly backward, holding both hands behind her. Cheyenne Harry turned red and white, and looked about him helplessly.
"You ain't big enough to have a gun!" she said, with scorn. "When you get man enough to tell me you're sorry, I'll give it back."
She crossed the room toward the street, dangling the pistol on one finger by the trigger guard.