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The instant Old Heck and Parker, in the Clagstone "Six," started for Eagle Butte and the cowboys disappeared down the lane in the direction of the big pasture, Skinny struggled into the white shirt. He planned to try its effect on Carolyn June while the others were away. If it did not produce results he would slip back to the bunk-house before they returned and change again to his normal dress.
Before the sun first touched Castle Rock on the morning of the feast they were up and in high feather over at the bunk-house. They raced across to see what Sam was cooking; they begged and joyfully swallowed lumps of his raw plum-pudding. "Merry Christmas!" they wished him, and "Melly Clismas!" said he to them. They played leap-frog over by the stable, they put snow down each other's backs.
After the ceremony the elder people sat down to dinner in the house, and the others in the bunk-house. Zen was radiant and calm; Transley handsome, delighted, self-possessed. His good luck was the subject of many a comment, both inside and out of the old house. He accepted it at its full value, and yet as one who has a right to expect that luck will play him some favors.
Probably this, also, was the reason she usually made it the last thing at night before Skinny and Old Heck left to go to the bunk-house. Coffee-jelly was the regular, inevitable, evening meal dessert for the entire week. "It ain't so very filling," Skinny remarked the first time he tasted the delicate dish, "but it's tender and has a dandy flavor!" Carolyn June blushed at the compliment.
Here, you walk on the other side. I'm left-handed when I shake with him." But Saunders was not at the bunk-house. Instead he had ridden on down to the gate and out upon the Moonstone Trail. He had become acquainted with Deputy Tenlow. He would make things interesting for the man who had "winged" him out in the desert. "I smell somethin' burnin'," said Overland significantly.
Our shack and the bunk-house and stables and hay-stacks tore a few pin-feathers off its breast, though; and those few feathers are drifts higher than my head, heaped up against each and all of the buildings. I scratched the frost off a window-pane, where feathery little drifts were seeping in through the sill-cracks, when it first began.
At this time he was living on a dollar a week, but every morning he had his little tea-party around the old stove, his word of greeting, and his final word of benediction to the men he had selected to share in his bounty as they slunk out of the bunk-house to begin the day. Later, he had a large-type New Testament out of which he read a verse or two every morning at the meal.
With that he dismounted and went into the house, leaving Senator Warfield without an excuse for following. Swan and Hawkins came up and waited with him, and Jim opened the door of the bunk-house and looked out at them without showing enough interest to come forward and speak to them.
I feeds her every time, though. Then she took to sleepin' ag'in' the bunk-house every night, seein' as she run loose jest like a dog. When somebody'd get up in the mornin', there she would be with her eyes lookin' in the winder, shinin', and her ears lookin' in, too. You see she was waitin' for her beau to come out, which was me.
It was a picture of you in riding-habit with your blue-ribbon horse, White Stockings remember? It was taken at Newport. Well, Stewart tacked the picture up in his bunk-house and named his beautiful horse Majesty. All the cowboys knew it. They would see the picture and tease him unmercifully. But he didn't care. One day I happened to drop in on him and found him just recovering from a carouse.
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