A hasty group formed.  The stable boy was guiltily leading the horse through the door and around the gaudy rider came the old man, and a woman who had run from a neighboring porch, and a long-moustached giant.  But all that Marianne distinctly saw was the white, set face of the rescuer as he soothed the child in his arms; in a moment it had stopped crying and the woman received it.  It was the old man who uttered the thought of Marianne.

“That was cool, young feller, and darned quick, and a nervy thing as I ever seen.”

“Tut!” said the other, but the girl thought that his smile was a little forced.  He must have heard those metal-armed hoofs as they whirred past his head.

“There is distinctly something worth while about these Westerners, after all,” thought Marianne.

Something else was happening now.  The big man with the sandy, long moustaches was lecturing him of the gay attire.

“Nervy enough,” he began, “but you’d oughtn’t to take a hoss around where kids are, a hoss that ain’t learned to stop kicking.  It’s a fool thing to do, I say.  I seen once where—­”

He stopped, agape on his next word, for the lectured had turned on the lecturer, dropped his hands on his hips, and broke into loud laughter.

“Excuse me for laughing,” he said when he could speak, “but I didn’t see you before and—­those whiskers, partner—­those whiskers are—­”

The laughter came again, a gale of it, and Marianne found herself smiling in sympathy.  For they were odd whiskers, to be sure.  They hung straight past the corners of the mouth and then curved sabre-like out from the chin.  The sabre parts now wagged back and forth, as their owner moved his lips over words that would not come.  When speech did break out it was a raging torrent that made Marianne stop her ears with a shiver.

Looking down the street away from the storming giant and the laughing cowpuncher, she saw that other folk had come out to watch, Westernlike.  An Eastern crowd would swiftly hem the enemies in a close circle and cheer them on to battle; but these Westerners would as soon see far off as close at hand.  The most violent expression she saw was the broad grin of the blacksmith.  He was a fine specimen of laboring manhood, that blacksmith, with the sun glistening on his sweaty bald head and over his ample, soot-darkened arms.  Beside his daily work of molding iron with heat and hammer-blows, a fight between men was play; and now, with his hands on his hips, his manner was that of one relaxed in mood and ready for entertainment.

Presently he cast up his right arm and swayed to the left; then back; then rocked forward on his toes presenting two huge fists red with iron-rust and oil.  It seemed that he was engaging in battle with some airy figure before him.

That was enough of a hint to make Marianne look again towards the pair directly below her; the hat of the gaudy cowpuncher lay in the dust where it had evidently been knocked by the first poorly aimed blow of him of the moustaches, and the owner of the hat danced away at a little distance.  Marianne saw what the hat had hitherto concealed, a shock of flame-red hair, and she removed her fingers from her ears in time to hear the big man roar:  “This ain’t a dance, damn you!  Stand still and fight!”