Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/78

. "Draw me a picture, Timberline, of this religious brand of can peaches." Phenie Logan tossed her head with a rippling laugh and lingered to enjoy to the full the reactions already charting their course across Timberline's weathered features. The elderly cow-punch had slammed his knife and fork down on his plate; a single tug whipped the sleazy napkin from where it was tucked under his bulging Adam's apple; the legs of his chair slithered in a backward push across the sanded floor. Timberline Todd's blue eyes, usually mild as the cups of a wind-flower, had hardened to sizzling carbon points. His cheeks were sucked in until the knobs of his jaw sockets stood out like twin headlands on the bleak contour of his features.

"I takes into count, Andy Dorson," old Todd began with studied politeness, "you was born somewheres under a barn, an' your early trainin'—most particular religious uprairin'—was 'bout as lackin' as a hermit kiote's; but allowin' for them drawbacks—the same you bein' not accountable for—anybody but a Crow squaw knows Minervy at the Well, which she is in the same class with Ole Man Noah an' his ark for gen'ral publicity.