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The weapon splintered in his hands as it found its mark, and as the big man struck the dirt floor Morrow leaped for the dim light which indicated the open door. A huge paw clamped on one ankle and a back-handed wrench sent him flying across the room to the far wall. With a sweep of the other hand Waddles slammed the door with a bang that jarred the cabin.
Groups of men packed the doorways, each one striving to appear unconcerned, as if his presence there was an accident instead of being occasioned by knowledge that something of interest would soon transpire. A man she knew for a Slade rider moved out to the edge of the sidewalk across the street from Harris. She saw the lumbering form of Waddles edging up beside him.
The voices were untrained but from long experience in rendering every song each man carried his part without a discordant note. Evans sang a perfect bass. Bangs a clear tenor; Moore faked a baritone that satisfied all hands and Waddles wagged his head in unison with the picking of his guitar and hummed, occasionally accenting the air with a musical, drumlike boom.
The three men conversed in the most casual, friendly fashion, as if there had never been a hint of friction between Harris and Harper in the past. A great voice rose above the buzz of conversation, filling the big room to the very rafters. "Choose your pardners for the dance!" Waddles bellowed from the makeshift platform at one end of the room. "Go get your ga-a-als!"
Get back to the house quick!" As they ran she noticed that his eyes were not upon the surging mass of cows in the valley but were trained on the broken slopes back of the house. "Anyway, they don't want you," he said. "We'll do the best we can." Waddles stood in the door of the cookhouse, his big face flushed with wrath as he gazed at the oncoming sea of cows.
She saw one man lurch sidewise and slip to the ground; another straightened in the saddle, swung for two jumps, and slid off backwards across the rump of his mount. She saw the great striped bug which was Waddles rise to his knees in the path of a third. The rider veered his mount and swung from the saddle, clinging along the far side of the running horse.
"The Judge is holding the reins over my little prospects too. They've tangled your interests and mine up all along the line it seems. You drop a line to Judge Colton and sort of outline the plan. Maybe he'll see it our way." They mounted and rode back to the wagon and the girl went straight to Waddles with the proposition Harris had urged.
The teams were unhitched; mounts were unsaddled and thrown into the horse herd, which was then headed into the mouth of a branching draw and allowed to graze. Waddles dumped off the bed rolls that were piled from the broad lowered tail-gate to the wagon top and each man sorted out his own and spread it upon some spot which struck him as a likely bed ground. One man carried water from the stream.
The crazed horse shook Waddles off but as he fell the other man fell with him, dragged from the saddle by the jerk of one mighty hand. They rolled apart and Morrow leaped to his feet but Waddles had wrenched the leg already numbed by the striking horse and it buckled under him and let him back to the ground as he put his weight on it. He reached for his gun.
For, as I live, it is a great puncheon of a woman, weighing over three hundred pounds puffing and steaming as she waddles toward the shrine a perfect Falstaff in petticoats. Shade of Venus! what a face and figure! Carbuncled with wine, and bloated with quass and cabbage soup, I'll bet my head, Dominico, she's a countess!
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