way bartenders used to do, with a circular movement as if he wound himself up.
"Pawnee Bend would dry up and blow away if it wasn't for the Texas trade," Mallon said. "There wouldn't be a decent place left runnin' in this town in six months if these Kansas cattlemen shut up the trails and kep' them Texas cowboys out like they want to. It would come down to a class of joints no decent man'd put his face in. Gentlemen, what's yours?"
The gentlemen who were targets of this pertinent shot had come lounging up to the bar in a bow-legged cowboy shamble from one of the tables. Theirs was whisky, of which each took as big a slug as the law allowed, scorning the chaser that Mallon stood out with each glass.
Some of the cowboys were attempting to follow the speedy, though somewhat erratic, course of the waltz the pianist was offering, encouraged and aided in this pursuit by the ladies of the house, who were familiar with the rapids and shallows of that tune. These ladies went to it with purely business alacrity and, like a coyote family, it was surprising what amount of noise a party so small could raise.
They rollicked and raced around, up and down the long room, cowboy enthusiasm and pleasure expressed in one of the two ways their limited resources could command. As the decorum of the occasion, as well as the safety of the ladies, did not permit shooting, they yipped.
Yipping is now a lost accomplishment; it passed with the old-time cowboy. Feeble echoes of it may be heard
