Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/107

 "A drug clerk might as well be a dog chained up in a kennel." He stopped the phonograph and changed the needle.

The stranger sat down beside the stove and placed his feet on the nickel railing. He left the collar of his mackinaw turned up, but untied his ear-laps. They looked rather foolish, dangling. His eyes were shadowed by the visor of his cap, so that really only his nose and cheek bones were visible. He glanced at the big clock on the wall frequently, and at intervals wiped the palms of his hands on the knees of his corduroy trousers as though to remove the moisture.

The clerk was putting on "When the Springtime Comes, Gentle Annie" when the opening door let in a breath from the Arctic and a tall person wearing new overalls, a coat of fleece-lined canvas and a peak-crowned Stetson. He had a scarf wound about his neck after the fashion of sheepherders.

"Hello, Bowers! Sober?" inquired the clerk, casually.

" Kinda. What you playin'?"

The clerk told him.

"Got a piece called 'The Yella Rose o' Texas Beats the Belles o' Tennessee'?"

" Never heard of it."

" Got — 'Whur the Silver Colorady Wends its Way'?"

The clerk replied in the negative.

"Why don't you git some good music? "

"Why aren't you at the show? "

"Too contrary, I reckon. When I'm out in the hills I'm a hankerin' to see somebody. When I git in town I want to git away from everybody. I'm goin' out tomorrow."