Tobe ceased to laugh. His big jaws set themselves suddenly square. “I'll do no such fool thing,” he declared, doggedly, “an' have the len'th an' brea'th o' Jim-Ned makin' fun o' me.”
“Very well,” said his wife, with equal determination, “ef you don't go, I will. But I give you fair warnin', Tobe Cullum, that ef you don't go, I'll never speak to you again whilse my head is hot.”
Tobe snorted incredulously; but he sneaked out to the stable after her, and when she had saddled and mounted Buster, he followed her on foot, running noiselessly some distance behind her, keeping her well in sight, and dodging into the deeper shadows when she chanced to look around.
“I didn't know Sissy had so much spunk,” he muttered, panting in her wake at last across the shinn-oak prairie. “Lord, how blazin' mad she is! But shucks! she'll git over it by mornin'.”
Mr. Hines was shivering with cold. He still whistled mechanically, but the hand that held the sputtering candle shook to the trip-hammer thumping of his heart. “The balance of 'em must of got lost,” he thought, listening to the lonesome howl of the wind across the prairie. “It's too c-cold for snipe, I reckon. I wisht I'd staid at home. I c-can't w-whistle any longer,” he whimpered aloud, dropping the candle-end, the last spark of courage oozing out of his nerveless fingers. He stood up, straining his eyes down the black gully and across the dreary waste around him. “Mr. T-o-o-be!” he called, feebly, and the wavering echoes of his voice came back to him mingled with an ominous sound. “Oh, Lordy! what is that?” he stammered. He sank to the ground, grabbing wildly for his gun. “It's a cougar! I hear him trompin' up from the creek! It's a c-cougar! He's c-comin' closter! Oh, Lordy!”
“Hello, Bud,” called Mrs. Cullum, cheerily. She slipped from the saddle as she spoke and caught the half-fainting snipe-hunter in her motherly arms.
“Ain't you 'shamed of yourse'f to let a passel o' no-'count men fool you this-a-way?” she demanded, sternly, when he had somewhat recovered himself. “Get up behind me. I'm goin' to take you to Mis' Bishop's, where you belong. No, don't you dassen to tech any o' that trash!”
Mr. Hines, feeling very humble and abashed, climbed up behind her, and they rode away, leaving the snipe—hunting gear, including Sid Northcutt's valuable rifle, on the edge of the gully.
She left him at Bishop's, charging him to swallow before going to bed a “dost” of the home-brewed chill medicine from a squat bottle she handed him.
“He cert'n'y is weaker'n stump-water,” she murmured, as she turned her horse's head; “but he's sickly an' consumpted, an' he's jest about the age my Bud would of been if he'd lived.”