rt, and it ought to go
through. But as it was a matter that seriously affected the comfort
and convenience of everybody in Palomitas, he said, it was only square
to take a vote on it--and so he'd ask all in favor of Mr. Cherry's
motion to say "Ay." And everybody in the room--except the few that was
asleep, or too drunk to say anything--said "Ay" as loud as they knowed
how.

"Mr. Cherry's motion is carried, gentlemen," Santa Fe said; "and I
will now appoint a committee to draught a notice to be posted at the
deepo, and to call around at the other banks and saloons in the town
and notify verbally our fellow-citizens of the action we have
taken--and I will ask the Hen here kindly to inform the other ladies
of Palomitas of our intentions, and to request their assistance in
realizing them. She had better tell them, I reckon, that the way they
can come to the front most effectively in this crisis is by keeping
entirely out of sight in the rear."

The Sage-Brush Hen, along with some of the other girls, had come in
from the back room--where the dancing was--to find out what the circus
was about; and when they caught on to what Palomitas was going to be
like when Hart's aunt struck it they all just yelled.

[Illustration: "WROTE OUT A NOTICE THAT WAS TACKED UP ON THE DEEPO DOOR"]

"You've come out well once as the Baptist minister, Charley," the Hen
said, shaking all over; "and I reckon you can do it again--only it
won't be so easy showing off the new church and the parsonage by
daylight as it was in the dark. About us girls laying low, maybe
you're right and maybe you're not right. Anyway, don't you worry about
us. All I'll say is, it won't be the ladies in this combine that'll
give anything away!" And she and the other girls got so to laughing
over it they all of 'em had to set down.

Cherry was more pleased than a little the way things had gone--and he
said so to the boys, and set up drinks all round again. Then he and
Abe Simons--they was the committee to do it--wrote out a notice that
was tacked up on the deepo door and read this way:

TO THE CITIZENS OF PALOMITAS

Mr. William Hart's aunt is coming to pay him a visit, and will
strike this town either by the Denver train to-morrow morning or
the Santa Fe coach to-morrow afternoon.

She is a perfect lady, and it is ordered that during her stay in
Palomitas this town has got to behave itself so her feelings won't
be hurt. She is to b