eet when he's packing one; ladies drag their children
by as fast as they can. But Jeff had the hitch all throwed before any of
the girls showed up, and all began in a lovely manner, the crowd of
about fifteen getting off not more than an hour late; Mr. Burchell in
the lead and a bevy of these jolly young rascals in their Non Plush
Ultras riding herd on him.

"Every girl cast cordial glances of pity at poor Hetty when she showed
up in her neat skirt and silly tan pumps with the ridiculous silk
stockings and the close-fitting blue-striped thing, free at the neck,
and her pretty hair all neated under the La Parisienne cow-girl hat. Oh,
they felt kinder than ever before to poor old Hetty when they saw her as
little daring as that, cheering her with a hearty uproar, slapping their
Non Plush Ultras with their caps or gloves, and then giggling
confidentially to one another. Hetty accepted their applause with what
they call a pretty show of confusion and gored her horse with her heel
on the off side so it looked as if the vicious brute was running away
and she might fall off any minute, but somehow she didn't, and got him
soothed with frightened words and by taking the hidden heel out of his
slats--though not until Mr. D. had noticed her good and then looked
again once or twice.

"And so the party moved on for an hour or two, with the roguish young
roughnecks cutting up merrily at all times, pretending to be cowboys
coming to town on pay day, swinging their hats, giving the long yell,
and doing roughriding to cut each other away from the side of Mr. D.
every now and then, with a noisy laugh of good nature to hide the
poisoned dagger. Daisy Estelle Maybury is an awful good rider, too, and
got next to the hero about every time she wanted to. Poor thing, if she
only knew that once she gets off a horse in 'em it makes all the
difference in the world.

"The dark city stranger seemed to enjoy it fine, all this noise and
cutting up and cowboy antics like they was just a lot of high-spirited
young men together, but I never weakened in my faith for one minute.
'Laugh on, my proud beauties,' I says, 'but a time will come, just as
sure as you look and act like a passel of healthy boys.' And you bet it
did.

"We hadn't got halfway to Stender's Spring till Mr. D. got off to
tighten his cinch, and then he sort of drifted back to where Hetty and I
was. I dropped back still farther to where a good chaperone ought to be
and he rode in besi