the Bar S cook,
pausing in his march past to poke his head in at the bunkhouse
doorway. "Honest, Racey, don't you ever get tired of yell-bellerin'
thisaway?"

Racey Dawson, standing in front of the mirror, ceased not to adjust
his necktie. The mirror was small and he was not, and it was only
by dint of much wriggling that he was succeeding in his purpose. To
Jimmie and his question he paid absolutely no attention.

"_Don't go away, stay at home if you can,
Stay away from that city, they call it Cheyenne_."

"Seemin'ly he don't get tired," Jimmie answered the question for
himself. "And what's more, he don't ever get tired of dandy-floppin'
himself all up like King Solomon's pet pony. Yup," Jimmie continued
with enthusiasm, addressing the world at large, "I can remember when
Racey used to ride for the 88 and the Cross-in-a-box how he was a
regular two-legged human being. A handkerchief round his neck was good
enough for him _always_. If his pants had a rip in 'em anywheres, or
they was buttons off his vest, or his shirt was tore, did it matter?
No, it didn't matter. It didn't matter a-tall. But now he's gotta buy
new pants if his old ones is tore, and a new shirt besides, and he
sews the buttons on his vest, and he's took to wearin' a necktie. A
_necktie_!"

Jimmie, words failing him for the moment, paused and hooked one foot
comfortably behind the other. He leaned hipshot against the doorjamb,
and spat accurately through a knothole in the bunkhouse floor.

"Yop," he went on, ramming his quid into the angle of his jaw, "and
he's always admiring himself in the mirror, Racey is. He pats his hair
down, after partin' it and usin' enough goose-grease on it to keep
forty guns from rusting for ten years, and he shines his boots with
blacking, _my_ stove-blacking, the rustling scoundrel. Scrouge
southwest a li'l more, Racey, and look at yore chin. They's a li'l
speck of dust on it. Oh, me, oh, my! Li'l sweetheart will have to wash
his face again. Who is she?"

Still Racey did not deign to reply. He placed, removed, and replaced a
garnet stickpin in the necktie a dozen times handrunning. Jimmie beat
the long roll with his knuckles on the bottom of the frying-pan, and
winked at the broad back of Racey Dawson.

"I hear they's a new hasher at Bill Lainey's hotel," pursued the
indefatigable Jimmie. "Tim Page told me she only weighed three hundred
pounds without her shoes. It ain't her! Don't tell me it's her! You
ain't,