The Fighting Shepherdess

Surveying himself complacently in the glass, it pleased Mr. Toomey to be jocose.

"Say, Old Girl, how long will it take you to pack your war-bag when I get this deal pulled off? It's a safe bet that this cross roads can't see me for dust, once I get that commission in my mitt." He turned and looked at her sharply. "What's the matter now, Mrs. Kill-joy? Where's it hurting the worst?"

Mrs. Toomey continued to powder the red tip of her nose until it showed pink.

"You're about as cheerful as an open grave--takes all the heart out of me just to look at your face. Speak up, Little Sunbeam, and tell Papa what you got on your chest?"

Mrs. Toomey laid down the powder puff.

"What if there should be some slip-up, Jap? We're letting ourselves in for a dreadful disappointment if we count on it too much."

He shook off her hands from his shoulders with an exasperated twitch.

"You're the original Death's Head, Dell! Don't you suppose I know what I'm talking about? It'll go through," confidently. "What's made you think it won't?"

Mrs. Toomey hesitated, then timidly: "I can't get it out of my head, Jap, but that he's related to Kate, and if that should happen to be so--"

"Good Lord! So you've dug that up to worry about? Look here--if he'd had any interest in her he'd have knocked me cold the first day he arrived."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Toomey asked quickly.

"Just that. Her name happened to come up, and I didn't mince my words in telling him about her past."

"Oh, Jap! Whatever made you do that?"

His thin lips curled.

"Why shouldn't I? Damn her--I hate her, somehow. The upstart--the gutter-snipe!"

She laid her hand across his mouth.

"You--shock me, Jap! I don't understand why you are so--venomous toward Kate. Sometimes," she looked at him searchingly, "I've wondered if you've injured her."

"What do you mean?" He breathed hard, in sudden excitement.

She stood for a moment twisting a button on his coat--her eyes downcast. Finally: "Nothing--much."

In the office of the Prouty House, redolent of the juniper and spruce boughs which took the bareness from the walls, the guests hungrily watched the hands of the clock creep towards the fashionable hour of eight.

"Among those present" was Mr. Clarence Teeters, circulating freely in a full dress coat and gray trousers--the latter worn over a pair of high-heeled cowboy boots and the former over a negligee shirt, beneath the cuffs of which two leather straps for strengthening the wrists peeped out. Fresh from the hands of the barber, Mr. Teeters' hair, sleek, glossy, fragrant, and brushed straight back, gave him a marked resemblance to a muskrat that has just come up from a dive.