o the house and leaned against the
jamb of the kitchen door.

"Have the makings, Ling?" He passed his tobacco-sack and paper to the
cook.

"Sure!" said Ling jauntily. "I like 'em cigilette."

And as they smoked fraternally together, they talked of food and its
preparation--subjects from which Ling's thoughts seldom wandered far. When
the advantages of soda and sour milk over baking powder were thoroughly
exhausted as a topic, Ralston asked casually:

"Who killed your last beef, Ling? It's hard to beat."

"Yellow Bird," he replied. "Him good butcher."

"Yes," Ralston agreed; "I should say that Yellow Bird was an uncommonly
good butcher."

So, after all, it was the Indians who were killing. Ralston sauntered on
to the bunk-house to think it over.

"Tubbs," McArthur was saying, as he eyed that person with an interest
which he seldom bestowed upon his hireling, "you really have a most
remarkable skull."

Tubbs, visibly flattered, smirked.

"It's claimed that it's double by people what have tried to work me over.
Onct I crawled in a winder and et up a batch of 'son-of-a-gun-in-a-sack'
that the feller who lived there had jest made. He come in upon me suddent,
and the way he hammered me over the head with the stove-lifter didn't
trouble _him_, but," declared Tubbs proudly, "he never even knocked me to
my knees."

"It is of the type of dolichocephalic," mused McArthur.

"A barber told me that same thing the last time I had a hair-cut,"
observed Tubbs blandly. "'Tubbs,' says he, 'you ought to have a massaj
every week, and lay the b'ar-ile on a-plenty.'"

"It is remarkably suggestive of the skulls found in the ancient paraderos
of Patagonia. Very similar in contour--very similar."

"There's no Irish in me," Tubbs declared with a touch of resentment. "I'm
pure mungrel--English and Dutch."

"It is an extremely curious skull--most peculiar." He felt of Tubbs's head
with growing interest. "This bump behind the ear, if the system of
phrenology has any value, would indicate unusual pugnacity."

"That's where a mule kicked me and put his laig out of joint," said Tubbs
humorously.

"Ah, that renders the skull pathological; but, even so, it is an
interesting skull to an anthropologist--a really valuable skull, it would
be to me, illustrating as it does certain features in dispute, for which I
have stubbornly contended in controversies with the Preparator of
Anthropology at the Ecole des Haute Etudes in Paris."

"Wh