Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/54

36 her Jackson might not have listened to a casual conversation, the women might have gone unchampioned.

A lady, a slimsy lady! An Easterner who called a mountain "mounting". Sheridan smiled in the dark at the trick of speech. His own sisters, back in Massachusetts, had it. Was not Boston, "Bosting," even to its bluest blooded?

Why they had come, what they were doing there, furnished a mystery that fascinated him. The slimsy girl, the husky serving-woman, if she was that, the violin—and Ghost Mountain. Ghost Mountain the unscaleable! It gripped him and he made up his mind to follow the challenge, to solve the riddle. She might or might not be pretty, said gossip; she was a lady. It was all provocative. It awakened chivalry, never very dormant with Sheridan. His rough life had not blunted his sensibilities nor his imagination.

"I wonder which one of 'em played the fiddle?" said Jackson out of the long silence.

"The girl, I imagine. Why?"

"I sure hanker after good fiddlin'," said Jackson. "There was a chap in Texas could make you snap yore fingers at the whole dern world or choke you up like a hurt babby. He was a squarehead, too. They're long on music. I'll bet you ten dollars it's the big one."

"I'll take you on that, Red."

"You're on. If that surprise party don't come off, which same we'll attend, let's you an' me make a social call, bein' as we're neighbors?"