ork, Enrique. Well,
I should say they were. I hope hell ain't any hotter than that fire.
Now, Tiburcio, if you have everything ready, we'll put them in the oven,
and bake them a couple of hours."

Several of us assisted in fixing the fire and properly coaling the
ovens. When this had been attended to, and we had again resumed our easy
positions around the fire, Trotter remarked: "Aaron, you ought to cut
drinking out of your amusements; you haven't the constitution to stand
it. Now with me it's different. I can drink a week and never
sleep; that's the kind of a build to have if you expect to travel and
meet all comers. Last year I was working for a Kansas City man on
the trail, and after the cattle were delivered about a hundred miles
beyond,--Ellsworth, up in Kansas,--he sent us home by way of Kansas
City. In fact, that was about the only route we could take. Well, it was
a successful trip, and as this man was plum white, anyhow, he concluded
to show us the sights around his burg. He was interested in a commission
firm out at the stockyards, and the night we reached there all the
office men, including the old man himself, turned themselves loose to
show us a good time.

"We had been drinking alkali water all summer, and along about midnight
they began to drop out until there was no one left to face the music
except a little cattle salesman and myself. After all the others quit
us, we went into a feed trough on a back street, and had a good supper.
I had been drinking everything like a good fellow, and at several places
there was no salt to put in the beer. The idea struck me that I would
buy a sack of salt from this eating ranch and take it with me. The
landlord gave me a funny look, but after some little parley went to the
rear and brought out a five-pound sack of table salt.

"It was just what I wanted, and after paying for it the salesman and
I started out to make a night of it. This yard man was a short, fat
Dutchman, and we made a team for your whiskers. I carried the sack of
salt under my arm, and the quantity of beer we killed before daylight
was a caution. About daybreak, the salesman wanted me to go to our
hotel and go to bed, but as I never drink and sleep at the same time,
I declined. Finally he explained to me that he would have to be at the
yards at eight o'clock, and begged me to excuse him. By this time he was
several sheets in the wind, while I could walk a chalk line without a
waver. Somehow we drift