t night, same as I've said, or even he'd
a-knowed he'd likely get into trouble talking that way to the Hen.

For about a minute things looked real serious. The Hen straightened
right up, and on the back of her neck--where it showed, she not being
fixed red there to start with--she got as red as canned tomatoes; and
some of the boys moved a little, sort of uneasy; and Santa Fe reached
out over the piles of chips for his gun. He didn't get it, because
the Hen saw what he was doing and stopped him by looking at him
quick--and knowing what Charley was when it come to shooting, you'll
know the Hen sent that look at him about as fast as looks can go! The
game had stopped right there; and it was so quiet in the room you'd
a-thought the snoring of the two drunks asleep on benches in one
corner was a thunder-storm coming down the canon!

Of course what we all expected the Hen to do was to wipe up the floor
with Hart's nephew by giving him such a talking to--she could use
language, the Hen could, when she started in at it--as would make him
sorrier'n usual he'd ever been born; and I guess, from the looks of
her, that was what at the first jump she meant to do. But she was a
quick-thinking one, the Hen was, and she had a way of getting more
funny notions into that good-looking head of hers than any other woman
that ever walked around on this earth alive--and so she give us all a
real jolt by playing out cards we wasn't expecting at all. Just as
sudden as a wink, she sort of twitched and twinkled--same as she
always did when she was up to some new bit of deviltry--and when she
set her stamps to going she talked like as if she was real pleased.
She didn't look, though, as good-natured as she talked--keeping on
being straightened up, and having a kind of setness in her jaws and a
snappiness in them big black eyes of hers that made everybody but
Hart's nephew, who was too drunk to know anything, dead sure she still
was mad all the way through.

"If he'll lend 'em to you, and I guess he will, why don't you get into
Mr. Hill's boots?" she said to Hart's nephew. And then she fetched up
a nice sort of smile, and said to him real friendly-sounding: "I do
like stage-drivers, and that's a fact--and there's no telling how
pleasant I'll make things for you if you'll take the coach across to
Santa Fe to-morrow over that Sunday-school road! Will you do it?" And
then the Hen give him one of them fetching looks of hers, and asked
him over: "Wil