Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/254

 such extent that they hadn't words enough left to express much of anything but yes and no.

Maud had grown away from this small mental confinement of the range. She said cow handling was a greatly overrated business; cowhands, like the brigands and pirates of romance, nothing but dirty, vulgar, swearing fellows elevattd by popular glamour to a 'nobility not their right. The guns they carried, said Maud, were responsible for that. Hang a gun on any common man and you make a hero of him. It hints of perils faced which he never meets, of combats fought which never take place in his narrow, monotonous life. There was not one cowhand in fifty, Maud declared, who could hit a horse with a pistol-shot at a hundred feet.

Jim hung around the ranch for a day or two, until he got his ears full of Maud's latest songs, then rode off on a tour of inspection of his various outfits afield. Cowhands came in from the nearer camps of an evening, sprightly bucks with brightly colored kerchiefs around their necks, dollar watches in their pockets dangling leather straps, combed and perfumed outrageously, and fairly clean above their necks.

Old Frank, who seemed to be a sort of adjutant, was around most of the time. He was likely to appear at any hour, lean his chair against the wall and sit tasting his unlighted cigarette, heels hooked over the chair rung, nothing at all to say. He appeared to have about the same status in Jinny's household as a chicken or a dog.