Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/148

 THE FIGHTING SHEPHERDESS

Teeters hammered down the flaps with a vigor that made the unwashed dishes on the table rattle, and grinned as he pictured the astonishment of Major Stephen Doug- las Prouty, who was still postmaster, when he read the names of the personages with whom he, Teeters, was in correspondence — after which he looked at the clock and saw that it was only seven.

So he thrust his hands in the pockets of his overalls, and, with his chair tilted against the wall at a comfortable angle, speculated as to his chances of success in the dude business.

The more Teeters had thought of Mormon Joe's as- sertion that, outside of stock, the chief asset of the country was its climate and its scenery, the more he had come to believe that Joe's advice to turn the Scissor outfit into a place for eastern tourists was valuable. It had been done elsewhere successfully, and there was no dearth of accom- modations on the place, since there was nothing much to the ranch but the buildings, as Toomey had fenced and broken up only enough land to patent the homestead.

Although Teeters was now the ostensible owner, in reality the place belonged to Hughie Disston's father, who had been the heaviest loser in the cattle company. Hughie had written Teeters that if they recovered from the reverse, and others that had come to them, they hoped to re-stock the range that was left to them and he wished to spend at least a portion of the year there. In the mean- time, it was for Teeters to do what he could with it.

" Dudes " had seemed to be the answer to his problem.

While making up his mind, he had not acted hastily. He had consulted the spirits, with Mrs. Emmeline Taylor and her ouija board as intermediary. " Starlight " had thought highly of the undertaking, and Mrs. Taylor, knowing that Miss Maggie's hope chest was full to over-

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