answer.

"Can't you talk?" cried Brayley, angrily. "Are you deef an' dumb? I
said, who might you be?"

"I heard you," replied Conniston, quietly. And to the man upon his
left, "Will you kindly pass me the bread?"

The man grinned in rare enjoyment, and, since he kept his eyes upon
Brayley's glowering face, it was hardly strange that he handed
Conniston a plate of stewed prunes instead.

"Thank you," Conniston said to him, still ignoring Brayley. "But it
was bread I said."

"An' I said something!" cut in Brayley, his voice crisp and incisive.
"Did you get me?"

"I got you, friend." Conniston put out his hand for the bread and
caught a gleam of sparkling amusement in Lonesome Pete's eyes from
across the table. "And maybe after you tell me who you are I might
answer you."

"Me!" thundered the big man, lurching one step nearer, his under jaw
thrust still farther out. "Me! I'm Brayley, that's who I am! An' I'm
the foreman of this here outfit."

"Thank you, Brayley." Conniston's anger was pounding in his temples,
but he strove to keep it back. "I'm Conniston. I was told to report
here by Mr. Crawford to go to work in the morning. I suppose I report
to you?"

"Conniston are you, huh? All right, Conniston. Now who happened to
tell you to slap yourself down in that there chair, huh?"

"Nobody," returned Conniston, calmly. "I didn't suppose that I was to
stand up and eat."

Lonesome Pete's grin overran his eyes, and the ends of his fiery
mustache curved upward. Two or three men laughed outright. Brayley's
brows twitched into a scowling frown.

"Nobody's askin' you to git funny, little rooster! You git out 'n that
chair an' git out 'n it fas'. _Sabe?_"

Calm-blooded by nature and by long habit, Conniston had mastered the
flood of blood to his brain and grown perfectly cool. Brayley, on the
other hand, had come in in a seething rage from a tussle with a colt
in which his stirrup leather had broken and he had rolled in the dust
of the corral, to the boundless glee of two or three of his men who
had seen it, and now there was nothing to restrain his anger.
Conniston was laughing into his face.

"I hear you," he said, lightly. "My ears are good, and your voice is
not bad by any means. Only I'd really like to know why you want me to
get up. Is it custom here for a new man to remain standing until the
foreman is seated? If I am violating any customs--"

Again Brayley took one lurching step forward. Conniston pushed