Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/103

 "Who to?"

"Teeters. I got five dollars." Mrs. Toomcy found it convenient to go into the pantry until she had regained control of her feelings.

It was twenty-eight degrees below zero when the doors of the Opera House were opened to permit the citizens of Prouty to hear the World Renowned Swiss Bell Ringers and Yodlers.

The weather proved to be no deterrent to a community hungry for entertainment, and they swarmed from all directions, bundled to shapelessness, like Esquimaux headed for a central igloo. Infants in arms and the bedridden in wheel chairs, helped to fill the Opera House to its capacity, emptying the streets and houses for a time as completely as an exodus.

While the best people, among whom were the Toomeys, occupied the several rows of reserved chairs and smiled tolerantly upon the efforts of the performers, and the proletariat stamped and whistled through its teeth and cracked peanuts, a man muffled to the ears by the high collar of a mackinaw coat, his face further concealed by the visor of a cap and ear-laps, rode to the top of the bench, drew rein and looked down upon the lights of Prouty.

It was not a night one would select for traveling on horseback, unless his business was urgent. However, the man's seemed to be of this nature, for he rode behind a large signboard which advertised the wares of the Prouty Emporium, dismounted, tied his horse to the prop that held the signboard upright, and with a show of haste took a coil of rope from his saddlehorn, an axe—the head of which was wrapped in gunny sacking — and a gun that swung in loops of saddle thongs at an angle to fit comfortably In the bend of the rider's knee.