“I’ll pander to the seat of yore overalls, if yuh don’t shut yore yap and git out of here.”
“Oh, I’ll go all right. You burn more wood than any danged cook I ever seen. You ort to git a job in the North Woods. You’d burn all the timber on a quarter section jist to bake one pan of biscuits.”
The kitchen door slammed shut. There was silence for several moments, broken by a rattle of tin dishes in the kitchen, and then Whisperin’s voice raised in song:
“‘Oh, glory be to me!’ says he, ‘and fame’s unfadin’ flowers,
I ride my good top hoss to-day, and I’m top hand of the Lazy J,
So Kitty-cat, you’re ours!’”
Came a verse of unintelligible words, and another chorus:
“‘Oh, glory be to me!’ says he, ‘we’ll hit the glory trail.
No man has lopped a lion’s head and lived to drag the critter dead,
Till I shall tell the tale.’”
It was the old southern Arizona cowboy song of High-Chin Bob, who tried to subdue a mountain lion alone with a rope. Old Whisperin’s voice quavered through the last chorus as Sailor came in to crash down his armful of wood.
“Singin’ to her already, eh?” he sneered.
“You didn’t want her, didja, Sailor?”
“I don’t like to see you make a fool of yoreself at yore age, Whisperin’.”