"Damn you, Glory--I could kill yuh for this!" gritted Weary, and slid
reluctantly from the saddle. For while the place seemed deserted, it
was not. There was a girl.
She lay in a hammock; sprawled would come nearer describing her
position. She had some magazines scattered around upon the porch, and
her hair hung down to the floor in a thick, dark braid. She was
dressed in a dark skirt and what, to Weary's untrained, masculine eyes,
looked like a pink gunny sack. In reality it was a kimono. She
appeared to be asleep.
Weary saw a chance of leading Glory quietly to the corral before she
woke. There he could borrow a bridle and ride back whence he came, and
he could explain about the bridle to Joe Meeker in town. Joe was
always good about lending things, anyway. He gathered the fragments of
the bit in one hand and clucked under his breath, in an agony lest his
spurs should jingle.
Glory turned upon him his beautiful, brown eyes, reproachfully
questioning.
Weary pulled steadily. Glory stretched neck and nose obediently, but
as to feet, they were down to stay.
Weary glanced anxiously toward the hammock and perspired, then stood
back and whispered language it would be a sin to repeat. Glory,
listening with unruffled calm, stood perfectly still, like a red statue
in the sunshine.
The face of the girl was hidden under one round, loose-sleeved arm.
She did not move. A faint breeze, freshening in spasmodic puffs,
seized upon the hammock, and set it swaying gently.
"Oh, damn you, Glory!" whispered Weary through his teeth. But Glory,
accustomed to being damned since he was a yearling, displayed
absolutely no interest. Indeed, he seemed inclined to doze there in
the sun.
Taking his hat--his best hat--from his head, he belabored Glory
viciously over the jaws with it; silently except for the soft thud and
slap of felt on flesh. And the mood of him was as near murder as Weary
could come. Glory had been belabored with worse things than hats
during his eventful career; he laid back his ears, shut his eyes tight
and took it meekly.
There came a gasping gurgle from the hammock, and Weary's hand stopped
in mid-air. The girl's head was burrowed in a pillow and her slippers
tapped the floor while she laughed and laughed.
Weary delivered a parting whack, put on his hat and looked at her
uncertainly; grinned sheepishly when the humor of the thing came to him
slowly, and finally sat down upon the porch steps and laughed with her.
"Oh, gee! It was too funny," gasped the girl, sitting up and wiping
her eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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