h stuff
cooked up to feed a jack-rabbit. Somebody's got to mosey in here and
peel the spuds."

"That's your funeral," said Cal, unfeelingly.

Chip stuck his head under the lifted tent-flap. "Say, I can't find
that cussed Three-H bottle," he complained. "What went with it, Cal?"

"Ask Slim; he had it last. Ain't Shorty here, yet?" Cal turned again
to Patsy, whose outcries were not nice to listen to, "Stay with it,
old-timer; we'll have something hot to pour down yuh in a minute."

Patsy replied, but pain made him incoherent. Cal caught the word
"poison", and then "corn"; the rest of the sentence was merely a
succession of groans.

The face of Cal lengthened perceptibly. He got up and went out to
where the others were wrangling with Slim over the missing bottle of
liniment.

"I guess the old boy's up against it good and plenty," he announced
gravely. "He says he's poisoned; he says it was the corn."

"Well he had it coming to him," declared Jack Pates. "He's stuck that
darned canned corn under our noses every meal since round-up started.
He--"

"Oh, shut up," snarled Cal. "I guess it won't be so funny if he cashes
in on the strength of it. I've known two or three fellows that was
laid out cold with tin-can poison. It's sure fierce."

The Happy Family shifted uneasily before the impending tragedy, and
their faces paled a little; for nearly every man of the range dreads
ptomaine poisoning more than the bite of a rattler. One can kill a
rattler, and one is always warned of its presence; but one never can
tell what dire suffering may lurk beneath the gay labels of canned
goods. But since one must eat, and since canned vegetables are far and
away better than no vegetables at all, the Happy Family ate and took
their chance--only they did not eat canned corn, and they had discussed
the matter profanely and often with Patsy.

Patsy was a slave of precedent. Many seasons had he cooked beneath a
round-up tent, and never had he stocked the mess-wagon for a long trip
and left canned corn off the list. It was good to his palate and it
was easy to prepare, and no argument could wean him from imperturbably
opening can after can, eating plentifully of it himself and throwing
the rest to feed the gophers.

"Ain't there anything to give him?" asked Jack, relenting. "That
Three-H would fix him up all right--"

"Dig it up, then," snapped Cal. "There's sure something got to be
done, or we'll have a dead cook