The Fighting Shepherdess

These were the conditions one spring day when the buds that had not already burst were bursting and Mr. Teeters dashed into Prouty. "Dashed" is not too strong a word to describe his arrival, for the leaders of his four-horse team were running away and the wheelers were, at least, not lagging. It was obvious to those familiar with Mr. Teeters' habits that he was en route to the station to meet incoming passengers. This was proclaimed by his conveyance and regalia. He wore a well-filled cartridge belt and six-shooter, while a horse hair watch chain draped across a buckskin waistcoat, ornate with dyed porcupine quills, gave an additional Western flavor to his costume. His beaded gauntlets reached to his elbow, and upon occasions like the present he wore moccasins. There was a black silk handkerchief around the neck of his red flannel shirt, and if the rattlesnake skin that encircled his Stetson did not bring a scream from the lady dudes when they caught sight of it, Teeters would feel keenly disappointed.

"I can wrangle dudes to a fare-ye-well and do good at it," Teeters had declared to the Major. And it was no idle boast, apparently, for Teeters stood alone, supreme and unchallenged, the champion dude-wrangler of the country.

"It's a kind of talent--a gift, you might say--like breakin' horses or tamin' wild animals," he was wont to reply modestly when questioned by those who followed his example and failed lamentably. "You got to be kind and gentle with dudes, yet firm with them. Onct they git the upper hand of you they's no livin' with 'em."

Five years had brought their changes to Teeters as well as to Prouty.

He was still faithful to Miss Maggie Taylor, but a subtle difference had come into his attitude towards her mother. He was less ingratiating in his manner, less impressed by the importance of her father, the distinguished undertaker; less interested in her recitals of her musical triumphs when she had played the pipe organ in Philadelphia. Her habit of singing hymns and humming which had annoyed him even in the days when he was merely tolerated, actually angered him.

Now, as the four horses attached to the old-fashioned stagecoach which had been resurrected from a junk-heap behind a blacksmith shop, repaired and shipped to the Scissor Outfit as being the last word in the picturesque discomfort for which dudes hankered, the onlookers observed with keen interest as the Dude Wrangler tore past the Prouty House, "There must be a bunch of millionaires coming in on the local."

The horses kept on past the station, but by throwing his weight on one rein Teeters ran them over the flat in a circle until they were winded. Then he brought them dripping and exhausted to the platform, where he said civilly to a bystander, indicating a convenient pickhandle: "If you'll jest knock the 'off' leader down if he bats an eyelash when the train pulls in, I'll be much obliged to you."