I gits a corner of a soogan in my
teeth, and that way I manages a little sleep. I vows I'd ruther be a hog
and git a night's rest than take in such a turrible bed-feller as him."

Apropos of the restless Babe, one James Padden observed: "They say he's
licked more'n half the Bar C outfit."

"Lick 'em!" exclaimed Meeteetse, with enthusiasm. "Why, he could eat 'em!
He jest tapped me an easy one and nigh busted my jaw. If he ever reely
hit you with that fist of his'n, it ud sink in up to the elbow. I ast him
once: 'Babe,' I says, 'how big are you anyhow?' 'Big?' he says surprised.
'I ain't big. I'm the runt of the family. Pa was thirty-two inches between
the eyes, and they fed him with a shovel.'"

Susie giggled at some thought, and then inquired:

"Did anybody ever see that horse he's huntin'? He says it's a two-year-old
filly that he thinks the world of. It's brown, with a star in its
forehead, and one hip is knocked down. He never hunts anywhere except on
that road past the school-house, and he stops at the pump each way--goin'
and comin'. I never saw anybody with such a thirst. He looks in the window
while he's drinkin', and swallows a gallon of water at a time, and don't
know it."

"Love is a turrible disease." Tubbs spoke with the emphasis of conviction.
"It's worse'n lump-jaw er blackleg. It's dum nigh as bad as glanders. It's
ketchin', too, and I holds that anybody that's got it bad ought to be
dipped and quarantined. I knowed a feller over in Judith Basin what
suffered agonies with it for two months, then shot hisself. There was
seven of 'em tyin' their horses to the same Schoolmarm's hitchin'-post."

"Take a long-geared Schoolmarm in a woolly Tam-o'-shanter, and she's a
reg'lar storm-centre," vouchsafed the husky voice of "Banjo" Johnson.

"They is! They is!" declared Meeteetse, with more feeling than the
occasion seemed to warrant.

The knob of a door adjoining the dining-room turned, and the grub-liners
straightened in their chairs. Susie's eyes danced with mischief as she
leaned toward Meeteetse and asked innocently:

"They is _what_?"

But with the opening of the door the voluble Meeteetse seemed to be
stricken dumb.

As a young woman came out, Smith stared, and instinctively McArthur half
rose from his chair. Believing his employer contemplated flight, Tubbs
laid a restraining hand upon his coat-tail, while inadvertently he turned
his knife in his mouth with painful results.

The young woman wh