Page:Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch.djvu/12

2 cans with their knives and luxuriated in the contents.

"Old man's nigh due, ain't he?" asked Lem, the storekeeper, lowering himself into a comfortable armchair that he kept for his own particular use on the porch.

"Gittin' to Bullhide this mawnin'," drawled one of the cowboys. "An' he's got what he went for, too."

"Bill Hicks most usually does git what he goes after, don't he?" retorted the storekeeper.

The other puncher chuckled. "This time Old Bill come near goin' out after rabbit an' only bringin' back the hair," he said. "Jane Ann is just as much of a Hicks as Bill himself—you take it from me. She made her bargain b'fore Old Bill got her headed back to the ranch, I reckon. Thar's goin' to be more newfangled notions at Silver Ranch from now on than you kin shake a stick at. You hear me!"

"Old Bill can stand scattering a little money around as well as any man in this State," Lem said, ruminatively. "He's made it; he's saved it; now he might's well 1'arn to spend some of it."

"And he's begun. Jane Ann's begun for him, leastways," said one of the cowboys. "D'ye know what Mulvey brought out on his wagon last Sat'day?"

"I knowed he looked like pitchers of 'movin'