“I’m —— glad yuh came along when you did. ’F I had to take him in alone I’d sure be stackin’ m’self agin’ a lot of misery.”
“I betcha,” nodded Hashknife. “As it is, we’ll split the misery three ways.”
“Takes somethin’ powerful to stir me in this —— heat; but right now I grows excited.”
“Pinch” Johnson leaned back against the doorway of Barney Stout’s blacksmith-shop and spat explosively. Barney lifted a perspiring face and ceased rasping on the hoof of a piebald bronco. His rasp fell to the floor with a clatter, and he came to the doorway, rubbing his horny hands on his leather apron.
“Ol’ Amos bringin’ comp’ny to town,” grunted Pinch.
“One’s that Half-Moon Swede,” observed Barney, “and he’s drunker ’n —— yet. Started out to walk to the ranch, and he was takin’ up both sides and the middle of the road.”
“And them ain’t all!” grunted Pinch, getting to his feet.
“They’s a pair of boots stickin’ out the end of that wagon, Barney!”
Skelton drove up in front of Shipman’s general store and tied his team to a porch-post. Several men crossed from the War-Bonnet saloon, and one of them was Jake Blue, the sheriff—a skinny, blear-eyed personage, of much self-importance and undoubted ability with a gun.