“What the hell’s all this?” Marianne heard him say in a voice which he tried to make an angered roar but which was only a shrill quaver from his weakness.  “Maybe I’m a lady?  Maybe I’ve fainted or something?  Not by a damned sight!  Maybe I been licked by that boiled-down bit of hell, Rickety, but I ain’t licked so bad I can’t walk home.  Hey, Perris, shake on it!  You trimmed me, all right, and you collect off’n me and a pile more besides me.  Here’s my boodle.”

At the mention of the betting a little circle cleared around Perris and from every side hands full of greenbacks were thrust forward.  The latter pushed back his sombrero and scratched his head, apparently deep in thought.

“It’s a speech, boys,” cried Arizona Charley, supporting himself on the shoulder of a friend.  “Give Red air; give him room; he’s going to make a speech!  And then we’ll pay him for what he’s got to say.”

There was much laughter, much slapping of backs.

“That’s Arizona,” remarked Corson.  “Ain’t he a game loser?”

“He’s a fine fellow,” said the girl, with emotion.  “My heart goes out to him!”

“Does it, now?” wondered Corson.  “Well, I’d of figured more on Perris being the man for the ladies to look at.  He’s sure set up pretty!  Now he makes his little talk.”

“Ladies and gents,” said Red Perris, turning the color of his sobriquet.  “I ain’t any electioneer when it comes to speech making.”

“That’s all right, boy,” shouted encouraging partisans.  “You’ll get my vote if you don’t say a word.”

“But I’ll make it short,” said Perris.  “It’s about these bets.  They’re all off.  It just come to my mind that two winters back me and this same Rickety had a run in up Montana-way and he come out second-best.  Well, he must of remembered me the way I just now remembered him.  That’s why he plumb quit when I let out a whoop.  If he’d turned loose all his tricks like he done with Arizona, why most like Charley would never of had to take his turn.  I’d be where he is now and he’d be doing the laughing.  Anyway, boys, the bets are off.  I don’t take money on a sure thing.”

It brought a shout of protest which was immediately drowned in a hearty yell of applause.

“Now, don’t that warm your heart, for you?” said Corson as the noise fell away a little.  “I tell you what—­” he broke off with a chuckle, seeing that she had taken a pencil and a piece of paper from her purse and was scribbling hastily:  “Taking notes on the Wild West, Miss Jordan?”

“Mental notes,” she said quietly, but smiling at him as she folded the slip.  She turned to the stripling, who all this time had hardly taken his eyes from her even to watch the bucking and to hear the speech of Perris.

“Will you take this to Jim Perris for me?”

A gulp, a grin, a nod, he was down from the wagon in a flash and using his leanness to wriggle snakelike through the crowd.