ou, Zip! Ged-dap!"

"Mr. Adam Forbes," said Charlie, "I've got you by the foot!"

* * * * *

"Now if you was wishful of any relaxations," said Adam after supper,
"you might side me up in the feet hills to-morrow, prospectin'."

"I might," said Charlie; "and then again I mightn't. Don't you go and
bet on it."

Adam stropped his razor. "You know there's three canyons headin'
off from MacCleod's Tank Park? And the farthest one, that big,
steep, rough, wide, long, high, ugly, sandy, deep gash that runs
anti-gogglin' north, splittin' off these spindlin' little hills from
the main Caballo and Big Timber Mountain--ever been through that?
'Pache Canyon, we call it--though we got no license to."

"Part way," said Charlie. Then his voice lit up with animation. "Say,
Big Chump, that's it! Them warty little hills here--that's what makes
us look down on you folks the way we do. And here I thought all along
it was because you was splay-foot farmers, and unfortunate, you know,
that way like all nesters is. But blamed if I don't think it was them
hills, all the time. We got regular old he-mountains, we have. But
these here little old squatty hills clutterin' up your back yard--why,
Adam, they ain't respectable, them hills ain't--squanderin' round
where a body might stub his toe on 'em, any time. You ought to pile
'em up, Adam. They look plumb shiftless."

"That listens real good to me. You got more brains than people say."
Adam scraped tranquilly at cheek and chin, necessitating an occasional
pause in his speech. "Now you can see for yourself how plumb foolish
and futile a little runt of a man seems to a people that ain't never
been stunted."

"'Seems' is a right good word," said Charlie. He blew out a smoke
ring. "You sure picked the very word you wanted, that time. I didn't
think you had sense enough."

Adam passed an appraising finger tip over his brown cheek; he stirred
up fresh lather.

"Yes," he said musingly, "a little sawed off sliver like you sure does
look right comical to a full-grown man. Like me. Or Hob Lull." He
paused, brush in air, to regard his guest benignantly. "I wonder if
girls feel that way too? Miss Lyn Dyer, now? Lull, he hangs round
there right smart--and he's a fine, big, upstanding man." He lathered
his face and rubbed it in. "First off, I fixed to assassinate him
quiet, from behind. You know them two girls don't hardly know where
they do live--always together, Hark