PAINTED ROCK
came round with a courting look in his eye and a new necktie on, Bill developed madness.
"I'll stand thishyer crowd off with a shotgun, Mary," he said to his wife. "Amandy is the gal to wed millions. There's no gal like Amandy. Cowboys is poison to me, and I'll make 'em food for cayoots if they kem languishin' around this raynch. You tell 'em so, d'ye hear? I'll feed 'em to the beasts of the field."
He snorted, and his white eyebrows looked very fierce. The young men in chappareros and guns fought shy of him. It is horrid to be confronted with a "gun" when one comes courting, for it is, of course, almost impossible to kill one's prospective father-in-law without discouraging the lady. That is what the boys felt, and some of the boldest of them quailed before Bill Higginson on that account.
"If we kills Ole Bill, Amandy will look sideways on us," they murmured. But they persevered, for Amandy was a daisy and a flirt, and looked at them under her eyelashes till they all felt that love for them bloomed in her tender heart. And it has to be owned
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