Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/72

 a groundless claim, but she could not see how he was to help matters any by killing or being killed in the dusty road before the hotel door. She ran after the others, hoping to see somebody come between the angry men and send them away without a fight.

Laylander was before the desk, waiting for Mrs. Cowgill, who was just edging around behind it as Louise reached the office. The railroaders were bunched where they had stopped just inside the office door, not rash enough to allow curiosity to draw them into danger. Angus Valorous, in his white shirt without a collar, the neckband open on his whiskered throat, was pushing after Mrs. Cowgill as if to lend his assistance in the crisis which seemed to confront the establishment. Withers had gone out to the sidewalk. Louise saw him stand there a moment, then turn to the right and saunter nonchalantly past the window out of sight.

"I wish to pay for myself and the other gentleman that et with me," Laylander said, his voice calm and steady.

"It'll be a dollar," Mrs. Cowgill told him, a flutter in her tone, a greater flutter in her heart, which, as she said when recalling the experience, felt like it would wear itself out against her ribs.

Laylander put the money down. At the sight of it all of Mrs. Cowgill's concern for herself was dissipated, the humane and gentle part of her nature, pretty well hardened and driven back out of sight by frontier boarding house life for twenty years and more, impelled her to grasp the young man's hand.