Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/81

 a big reputation in them parts as a camel waterer, an' some artist painted her picture. Parson Hollingshed over to No Wood had it hung up in his setting room; which it has underneath the picture, Minervy at the Well."

Phenie arrived at the table just then with two cans of peaches, their tops opened and turned back. Behind the pretty biscuit shooter followed another figure whom the disputants in the heat of their argument failed to observe. An arresting shape she was. Of enormous girth, which was more solid muscle than fat; big masculine hands ungloved; a ridiculously inadequate bonnet with some nightmare feather sprouting out from its crown resting on her great head like half an eggshell on a globe of the world; the woman appeared a demobilized Amazon translated from legendary Pontus to the Big Country. When she took a seat at the table across the room from the two cowmen her feet, shod with men's boots, stuck out beyond the table line. Over each boot the turned-up leg of a pair of overalls showed under the hem of her calico skirt. She ordered ham and eggs, "fry 'em easy"; her smile, wholly feminine and all motherly, accompanied the order she gave to Phenie.