"Tell her yes."
Willie nodded, taking a deep breath to chase the whisky. "She's r-right interested in you. When she found out I rode up here with you, she asked all about you. I told her when I first s-seen you, you was laying in the grass naked as a p-pup p-possum."
Tesno gave him a murderous look. Willie grinned.
"She l-laughed like hell," he said.
[VI]
The council meeting took place in a large, unpainted room in the townhouse. Persia presided, just as if she were the legitimate mayor. She sat at one end of a table, wearing a dark serge suit and looking both businesslike and beautiful. Sam Lester sat at the other end, inscrutable behind the crystal mask of his spectacles. The four council members sat in between. Tesno drew up a chair to one side of Persia.
He listened impatiently while the members quibbled over the location of a town watering trough. A rasp-voiced man named Parris, who operated the hotel, did most of the talking. The three saloonkeeping councilmen kept glancing at Persia as if she would make the decision and the debate was a mere formality. Pinky Bronklin sat with his talonlike hand on the table where all could see it and said hardly a word.
Persia introduced Tesno with some little formality. He stated his demands as concisely as possible. He tried to avoid a dictatorial tone, yet he made it clear that one way or another he intended to see a drastic change in the town. When he had finished, the saloonkeepers sat sullenly quiet. It was Mr. Parris who spoke up, and he was angry.
"I agree that we could stand some improvement around here," he said. "But to request co-operation is one thing, to tell us what to do, another. Begging your pardon, Persia, I move that we tell Mr. Tesno to go to hell and then face our problems in our own way."