Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/87

Rh He viewed Jackson with a special enmity, guessing that the cowboy must have in some way got wind of their trip while he was in town. He knew nothing of the meeting with Juanita. But Red stolidly outstared him over his doughnut.

A chorus of praise arose when the crock was emptied.

"Thora will make you some more another time," promised the girl. "I hope we shall all be friends and neighbors."

"Ain't you two gels afeared to stay up here alone?" asked a man. "We nigh run into a lion on the way up."

"Tell them about the lion, Thora."

Thora grinned. Her teeth were as good as those of Mary Burrows, only larger, suggestive of vigorous mastication.

"One lion he bane come snoopin' around," she said. "Last night it was. You want you should know what I did to heem?"

With dramatic appreciation of what she was about to do, she went through the doorway to the room from which she had produced the kettle. They gaped at her returning, dragging, well off the floor, her grasp in the scruff of its neck, an enormous brownish-yellow body with underparts of dirty white and a gray face that snarled and showed its fangs in the stiff mask of death. Without an effort she lifted it full length with one arm and exhibited it before she flung it on the planks among the astonished, deeply impressed group.

"I think be git tired of mountain sheep, mebbe.