Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/86

 much as he 's afraid of the blats. So last winter he goes to Arkansaw Hot Springs to get the blats boiled out of him, he bein' strong as a red onion of the sheep. But pore ole Elk gets his last an' worse blow down to the Springs.

No use your coming here,' says the doc in charge of the Springs. 'We can boil out rheumatics like we 'd boil shirts, an' we can cure lepresy an' send cripples home good as new, but there ain't no springs invented which can boil the sheep blats out of a sheep herder.

There was a sound of a chair pushed back, a few heavy treads which made the eating-house floor tremble, and Woolly Annie stood by Andy and Timberline's table. She turned her great moon face to one, then to the other; it was bland and unruffled as the shell of a pumpkin in harvest frost.

"Gentlemen, both," said Woolly Annie, and with lightninglike movement her hands had shot out and wrapped themselves about the two half-consumed cans of peaches. Before either man could recover from the shock of her attack, the cans were inverted over their respective heads. Heavy globes of fruit and streams of sticky sirup cascaded down on each.