第83章

"There's the BOY for you;" "There was nerve for you;" "What's the matter with Annixter?" "How about THAT for sand, and how was THATfor a SHOT?" "Why, Apache Kid couldn't have bettered that.""Cool enough." "Took a steady eye and a sure hand to make a shot like that." "There was a shot that would be told about in Tulare County fifty years to come."Annixter had refrained from replying, all ears to this conversation, wondering just what had happened.He knew only that Delaney had run, leaving his revolver and a spatter of blood behind him.By degrees, however, he ascertained that his last shot but one had struck Delaney's pistol hand, shattering it and knocking the revolver from his grip.He was overwhelmed with astonishment.Why, after the shooting began he had not so much as seen Delaney with any degree of plainness.The whole affair was a whirl.

"Well, where did YOU learn to shoot THAT way?" some one in the crowd demanded.Annixter moved his shoulders with a gesture of vast unconcern.

"Oh," he observed carelessly, "it's not my SHOOTING that ever worried ME, m'son."The crowd gaped with delight.There was a great wagging of heads.

"Well, I guess not."

"No, sir, not much."

"Ah, no, you bet not."

When the women pressed around him, shaking his hands, declaring that he had saved their daughters' lives, Annixter assumed a pose of superb deprecation, the modest self-obliteration of the chevalier.He delivered himself of a remembered phrase, very elegant, refined.It was Lancelot after the tournament, Bayard receiving felicitations after the battle.

"Oh, don't say anything about it," he murmured."I only did what any man would have done in my place."To restore completely the equanimity of the company, he announced supper.This he had calculated as a tremendous surprise.It was to have been served at mid-night, but the irruption of Delaney had dislocated the order of events, and the tables were brought in an hour ahead of time.They were arranged around three sides of the barn and were loaded down with cold roasts of beef, cold chickens and cold ducks, mountains of sandwiches, pitchers of milk and lemonade, entire cheeses, bowls of olives, plates of oranges and nuts.The advent of this supper was received with a volley of applause.The musicians played a quick step.The company threw themselves upon the food with a great scraping of chairs and a vast rustle of muslins, tarletans, and organdies;soon the clatter of dishes was a veritable uproar.The tables were taken by assault.One ate whatever was nearest at hand, some even beginning with oranges and nuts and ending with beef and chicken.At the end the paper caps were brought on, together with the ice cream.All up and down the tables the pulled "crackers" snapped continually like the discharge of innumerable tiny rifles.

The caps of tissue paper were put on--"Phrygian Bonnets,""Magicians' Caps," "Liberty Caps;" the young girls looked across the table at their vis-a-vis with bursts of laughter and vigorous clapping of the hands.

The harness room crowd had a table to themselves, at the head of which sat Annixter and at the foot Harran.The gun fight had sobered Presley thoroughly.He sat by the side of Vanamee, who ate but little, preferring rather to watch the scene with calm observation, a little contemptuous when the uproar around the table was too boisterous, savouring of intoxication.Osterman rolled bullets of bread and shot them with astonishing force up and down the table, but the others--Dyke, old Broderson, Caraher, Harran Derrick, Hooven, Cutter, Garnett of the Ruby rancho, Keast from the ranch of the same name, Gethings of the San Pablo, and Chattern of the Bonanza--occupied themselves with eating as much as they could before the supper gave out.At a corner of the table, speechless, unobserved, ignored, sat Dabney, of whom nothing was known but his name, the silent old man who made no friends.He ate and drank quietly, dipping his sandwich in his lemonade.

Osterman ate all the olives he could lay his hands on, a score of them, fifty of them, a hundred of them.He touched no crumb of anything else.Old Broderson stared at him, his jaw fallen.

Osterman declared he had once eaten a thousand on a bet.The men called each others' attention to him.Delighted to create a sensation, Osterman persevered.The contents of an entire bowl disappeared in his huge, reptilian slit of a mouth.His cheeks of brownish red were extended, his bald forehead glistened.

Colics seized upon him.His stomach revolted.It was all one with him.He was satisfied, contented.He was astonishing the people.

"Once I swallowed a tree toad." he told old Broderson, "by mistake.I was eating grapes, and the beggar lived in me three weeks.In rainy weather he would sing.You don't believe that,"he vociferated."Haven't I got the toad at home now in a bottle of alcohol."And the old man, never doubting, his eyes starting, wagged his head in amazement.

"Oh, yes," cried Caraher, the length of the table, "that's a pretty good one.Tell us another.""That reminds me of a story," hazarded old Broderson uncertainly;"once when I was a lad in Ukiah, fifty years""Oh, yes," cried half a dozen voices, "THAT'S a pretty good one.

Tell us another."

"Eh--wh--what?" murmured Broderson, looking about him."I--Idon't know.It was Ukiah.You--you--you mix me all up."As soon as supper was over, the floor was cleared again.The guests clamoured for a Virginia reel.The last quarter of the evening, the time of the most riotous fun, was beginning.The young men caught the girls who sat next to them.The orchestra dashed off into a rollicking movement.The two lines were formed.In a second of time the dance was under way again; the guests still wearing the Phrygian bonnets and liberty caps of pink and blue tissue paper.

But the group of men once more adjourned to the harness room.