Well, it was this Hart's nephew--like enough he had some sort of a name that belonged to him, but he wasn't worth the trouble of finding out what it was--who chipped in when the Hen took to her tirading, and so give things a new turn. Standing up staggery, and talking in his drunk fool way, he told her the road across to Santa Fé was as safe as a Sunday-school; and he said he'd be glad to be in Hill's boots and drive that coach himself, seeing what an interest she took in stage-drivers; and he asked her, sort of nasty, how she managed to get along for company when Hill was at the other end of his run. Hart's nephew was drunker'n usual that 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 Fé 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 cañon! 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.