Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/296

 Fred jogged along a little way, throwing a sly look across at his companion now and then.

"Well, who's goin' to marry her, then?" he wanted to know.

"I expect somebody will step up to fill the bill. She wouldn't consider a feller that muddles and messes everything he touches."

"Oh, you ain't done so bad for a green man on the range," Fred encouraged him.

"Bad! I let that scrub Findlay insult me the first time I met him without knockin' his teeth through the back of his neck. And then I let him shoot me through the bellows, and go and lie around on the sunny side of a haystack instead of goin' right after him and cuttin' his eyelids off."

"Didn't we go after him as soon as you was able to sling a gun? Yes, and before you was able, by rights. It wasn't your fault that he didn't happen to be in Bonita that night we cleaned things up."

"Cleaned things up! Fred, we shot one poor, gangle-shanked cattle rustler in the heel."

"Well, we might 'a' missed him," said Fred, not at all ashamed of the record of that noisy night.

"Yes, and Findlay was at the ranch the other night, and I had him where I wanted him, but I didn't have the nerve to give it to him then. I guess I was afraid I'd spoil the carpet."

"No man wants to shoot a feller before a lady, 'specially a feller that ain't got no gun on him. You done right; you done what any man that is a man would 'a' done in the same compunction. Don't grieve