The other came out of the gloom, a little stoop-shouldered man
with spectacles.
"I ain't noways sure," he piped, peering up at his lanky foreman.
"Why do you reckon he allus lets Mrs. Melby peter out on my
favorite record? He done the same thing last night. It looks like
an insult."
"It's nothing but ignorance," Stover replied. "He don't want no
trouble with you. None of 'em do."
"I'd like to know for certain." The small man seemed torn by
doubt. "If I only knew he done it a-purpose, I'd git him. I bet I
could do it from here."
Stover's voice was gruff as he commanded: "Forget it! Ain't it
bad enough for us fellers to hang around like this every night
without advertising our idiocy by a gun-play?"
"They ain't got no right to that phonograph," Willie averred,
darkly.
"Oh yes, they have; they won it fair and square."
"Fair and square! Do you mean to say Humpy Joe run that foot-race
on the square?"
"I never said nothin' like that whatever. I mean we bet it, and
we lost it. Listen! There goes Carara's piece!"
Out past the corral floated the announcement in a man's metallic
syllables:
"_The Baggage Coach Ahead,_ as sung by Helena Mora for the
Echo Phonograph, of New York and Pa-a-aris!"
From the dusk to the right of the two listeners now issued soft
Spanish phrases.
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