"It looks like Bessie Maud don't git much chanct to fergit _her_ troubles."
It was about nine o'clock when they pulled up in the main street of Georgetown and gave Nip a drink from the fountain. They had traveled a little over twenty miles.
"We'll tie up in there," said Jerry, nodding sidewise in the direction of a grassy back street. "It's a nice, quiet place to eat our lunch, an' there's grass fer Nip."
Judith sprang out of the cart and together they started out to see the town.
Trading was already in full swing. The main street was lined on both sides by buggies and spring wagons, with here and there an automobile. The side streets, too, were quickly filling up, as farmers' rigs of various kinds came rattling into town looking for a place to tie up. Riders galloped along the street, sometimes leading one or more horses behind them. And in a vacant lot that flanked one of the hotels a human ring had formed itself around a group of restive mountain cattle in the midst of which a sun-browned young fellow was gesticulating and talking loudly. From this ring one could see the back quarters of the hotel piled with heaps of boxes, crates, old lumber, and refuse swarmed over by flies. From the inevitable large pile of scrap iron and tin cans, a few as yet unrusted surfaces reflected the sun's rays like mirrors.
The street in front of the hotel was thronged with a crowd of men wearing, not the clothes they put on for funerals, but something a little better than the clay-caked overalls of daily wear. The swinging doors of the bar were already active on their limber hinges, and a smell of beer oozed out into the street, carrying a suggestion of kegs and coolness.
As they passed these swinging doors, Joe Barnaby came out, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
"Me I bin here this two hours past. There's bin some mighty smart tradin' a-goin' on. Two bunches o' maounting cattle sold dirt cheap. If I had a place o' my own I'd like to git me a few head o' them maounting cattle an' slick 'em up with good feed an' mate 'em to a short horned bull. They'd sell good when they come fresh, an' there'd be money in it. But anybody can't do nuthin 'ithout capital. The young uns eats up everything I kin make fast's I make it. So there you are. 'Ithout land or capital a feller goes raound year after year the same old turns, like a squirrel in a cage, an' comes back at the end right where he started from."