h Carrots, shooting mad at having anybody sassing her; and
Santa Fe's forehead getting whiter and whiter; and all hands on their
hind legs at having Palomitas called a slum of the wilderness--and
likely worse things said about the place in words nobody'd ever heard
tell of longer'n your arm. The only one keeping quiet was Wood. He was
sure, Wood was, trouble was coming beyond his stopping; and as he
knowed which side his bread was buttered, and how he'd be fired from
his job if things happened to go serious, he just went and sat down
in a corner and swore to himself sorrowful, and was about the
miserablest-looking man you ever seen alive. I guess it was more'n
anything else being pitiful for Wood made things take the turn they
did when the Sage-Brush Hen come into the game.

"Now you all hear _me_!" the Hen sung out sudden--and as the Hen
wasn't much given to no such public speaking, and the boys was used to
doing quick what she wanted when she asked for it, everybody stopped
talking and Blister put his gun down on the bar. Most of us, I reckon,
had a feeling the Hen was going to let things out in some queer way
she'd thought of in that funny head of hers--same as she'd done other
times when matters was getting serious--and we all was ready to help
her with any skylarking she was up to that would put a stop to the
rumpus and so get Wood out of his hole. As for Boston--being too much
of a fool to know what he'd done to start such a racket--he was all
mazed-up by it: staring straight ahead of him like a horse with
staggers, and looking like he wished he'd never been born.

"You all hear _me_, I tell you!" says the Hen, taking a-hold of
Boston's arm sort of motherly. "While I am the school-teacher in
Palomitas I shall not permit you boys to play your pranks on
strangers; and 'specially not on this gentleman--whom I claim as a
friend of mine because we both come from the same dear old town."

That was the first time anybody'd ever heard the Hen wasn't
hatched-out in Kansas City. But it didn't seem as if calling her hand
would be gentlemanly, so nobody said nothing; and off she went
again--talking this time to Boston, but winking the eye away from him
at the boys.

"It is merely a joke, sir," says the Hen, "that these young men are
playing on you--and as silly a joke as silly can be. Sometimes, in
spite of my most earnest efforts to stop them, they will go on in this
foolish way: pretending to be wild and wicked and murd