Among these strangers, as they gathered in some saloon to make a night of it, he loved to burst with his assertion of individual sovereignty.
* * * * * Lime was out mending fence when Johnny came home to tell him what Steve had said.

Johnny was anxious to see his faith in his hero justified, and watched Lime carefully as he pounded away without looking up.

His dress always had an easy slouch about his vast limbs, and his pantaloons, usually of some dark stuff, he wore invariably tucked into his boot-tops, his vest swinging unbuttoned, his hat carelessly awry.
Being a quiet, sober man, he had never been in a saloon when Steve entered to swing his hat to the floor and yell: "I'm Jack Robinson, I am! I am the man that bunted the bull off the bridge! I'm the best man in Northern Iowa!" He had met him, of course, but Steve kept a check upon himself when sober.
"He says he can knock the spots off of you," Johnny said, in conclusion, watching Lime roguishly.
The giant finished nailing up the fence, and at last said: "Now run along, sonny, and git the cows." There was a laugh in his voice that showed his amusement at Johnny's disappointment.

"I ain't got any spots." On the following Saturday night, at dusk, as Lime was smoking his pipe out on the horse-block, with the boys around him, there came a swiftly-driven wagon down the road, filled with a noisy load of men.
They pulled up at the gate, with a prodigious shouting.
"Hello, Lime!" "Hello, the house!" "Hurrah for the show!" "It's Al Crandall," cried Johnny, running down to the gate.

Lime followed slowly, and asked: "What's up, boys ?" "All goin' down to the show; climb in!" "All right; wait till I git my coat." Lime was working one of Graham's farms on shares in the summer; in the winter he went to the pinery.
"Oh, can't we go, Lime ?" pleaded the boys.
"If your dad'll let you; I'll pay for the tickets." The boys rushed wildly to the house and as wildly back again, and the team resumed its swift course, for it was getting late.