ct; and Hill said he got so
rattled sometimes--when it happened he hadn't no passengers and was
going it alone in among them sandhills--he guessed it was only because
he had so little hair to turn anything it didn't turn gray.

Hill slept at the Forest Queen, the nights he was in Palomitas--he
drove one way one day and the other way the next--and the boys made
things cheerfuller for him by all the time rigging him about the poor
show he had for sticking long at his job. He'd look well, they said,
a-laying out there in the sage-brush plugged full of lead waiting for
his friends to call for him; and they asked him how he thought he'd
enjoy being a free-lunch counter for coyotes; and they told him he'd
better write down on a piece of paper anything he'd like particular to
have painted on the board--and they just generally devilled him all
round. Hill didn't mind the fool talk they give him--he always was a
good-natured fellow, Hill was--and he mostly managed to hit back at
'em, one way or another, so they'd come out about even and end up with
drinks for all hands.

The only one who really didn't like that sort of talk, and always
kicked when the boys started in on it, was the Sage-Brush Hen. She
said it was a mean shame to make a joke about a thing like that,
seeing there wasn't a day when it mightn't happen; and it wasn't like
an ordinary shooting-match, she said, that come along in the regular
way and both of you took your chances; and sometimes she'd get that
mad and worried she'd go right smack out of the room.

You see, the Hen always thought a heap of Hill--they having got to be
such friends together that first day when he brought her over to
Palomitas on the coach and helped her put up her rig on the old gent
from Washington; and, back of her liking Hill specially, she really
was about as good-natured a woman as ever lived. Except Hart's
nephew--she did just hate Hart's nephew, who was a chump if ever there
was one--she always was as pleasant as pie with everybody; and if any
of the boys was hurt--like when Denver Jones got that jag in his
shoulder rumpussing with Santa Fe Charley; and she more friends with
Charley, of course, than with anybody else--she'd turn right in and
help all she knowed how.

But it's a cold fact, for all her being so good-natured and obliging,
that wherever that Hen was there was a circus. It was on her account
Charley and Denver had their little difficulty; and, one way and
another, th