mmock awaiting the arrival of her
brother and mother, Ken Douglass outspanned his weary scraper team and
called his day's work done. The damage had been of even greater
magnitude than he had feared and his most sanguine estimate placed the
time required for complete repairs at three more days.

He had impressed every available man and team into the service, leaving
only one young fellow at the ranch to do the choring inseparable to a
holding like the C Bar. Having outlined his plans and assigned to each
man his specific duty, he had personally plunged into the thick of the
work, driving his men only a trifle less strenuously than he did
himself. In consequence whereof it was a sore-muscled crowd that
ruefully rubbed their aching backs about the camp-fire that night,
quaintly profane after the manner of their kind.

"Gawd! But you make a bum driver, Punk," said one of them
dispassionately to a short, squat fellow who was anointing his blistered
hands with bacon drippings. "Yuh pushed so hawd on thu lines that yuh
raised cawns on that claybank's gooms. Was yuh thinkin' yuh was polin
dogies oveh to Glenwood again?"

Now Punk Dixon was a bit sensitive on the dogie question; while employed
in the engaging pursuit of prodding refractory yearlings up a loading
chute that spring his flimsy footing had given way, precipitating him
under the feet of two score frightened animals whose sharp hoofs had
reduced his brand new "chaps" to rags and himself to a sadly dilapidated
mass of incoherent blasphemy. But he grinned good-naturedly and wiped
the surplus grease off his hands over the head of his tormenter.

"Thar! That's better'n that pink axle-grease yuh been lavigatin' yuh
pore old coco with, Woolly," vigorously massaging the viscid fat into
the bald pate with his thumbs, much to the hilarious enjoyment of the
inconstant crowd who laughed even louder at the last victim's
discomfiture. It was a tradition that "Woolly" Priest had been born with
exceedingly long hair in plenteous supply, losing it in the stress of a
hard winter succeeding "thet awful calamity to Grand County," as the
narrator generously put it, by reason of a goat's having dined upon it,
mistaking it for wire grass! According to the veracious relator his head
had been so soft and mushy that the goat had "pulled the bristles out by
the roots 'n they wa'nt annythin' left fer a starter." Certain it is
that the shiny poll was entirely devoid of any hirsute covering at