"Ah, now, this is all right," each man said, when Curtis offered chairs. "You take the chair, Jim; you take it, Joe--this suits me." Lawson was interested in their cranial development, and their alignment along the wall gave a fine opportunity for comparison. "They were, for the most part, shapeless and of small capacity," he said afterwards--"just country bumpkins, trained to the horse and the revolver, but each of them arrogated to himself the judicial mind of the Almighty Creator." The sheriff, leaning far back in the big Morris chair, wore a smirking smile which seemed to say: "Boys, I'm onto this luxury all right. Stuffed chair don't get me no back-ache. Nothing's too rich for _my_ blood--if I can get it." The young fellows were transfixed with awe of Calvin, for, though the last to enter the house, he walked calmly past the library door on into the dining-room, and a moment later could be heard chatting with the girls, "sassy as a whiskey-jack." One big, freckled young fellow nudged his neighbor and said: "Wouldn't that pull your teeth? That wall-eyed sorrel has waltzed right into the kitchen to buzz the women. Say, his neck needs shortening." "Does he stand in, or is it just gall?" "It's nerve--nothing else. We ain't onto our job, that's all." "Oh, he knows 'em all right. I heered he stands in with the agent's sister." "The hell he does! Lookin' that way? Well, I don't think. It's his brass-bound cheek. Wait till we ketch him alone." Cal appeared at the door. "Well, fellers, come in; grub's all spread out." "What you got to say about it?" asked Green. "Think you're the nigger that rings the bell, don't ye?" remarked Galvin. "We're waitin' for the boss to say 'when.'" Not one of them stirred till Curtis rose, saying to the sheriff, "Well, we'll take time later to discuss that; come right out and tame the wolf." The fact that Curtis accepted Calvin's call impressed the crowd deeply. "You'd think he was one o' the fambly," muttered Galvin. "Wait till we get a rope 'round his neck." The table, looking cool and dainty in its fleckless linen, was set with plates of cold chicken and ham, with pots of jelly and white bread at each end of the cloth, beside big pitchers of cool milk. To the cowboys, accustomed only to their rude camps and the crude housekeeping of the settlers round about, this dainty cleanliness of dining-room was marvellously subduing. They shuffled into their seats noisily, with only swift, animal-like glances at the girls, who were bubbling over with the excitement of feeding this band of Cossacks. As they drank their milk and fed great slices of bread and jelly into their mouths, fighting Indians seemed less necessary than they had supposed. Whiskey and alkali dust, and the smell of sweating ponies, were all forgotten in the quiet and sweetness of this pretty home. The soft answer had turned wrath into shamefaced wonder and awkward courtesy.