"When Lot shifted to San Luis Obispo, old man Dougherty he came along too--craving for his fight. It was cocktails and plug to him. It grew on him. Lot handled him too gently because of the wife. The old man could come to the scratch once a month, and always at the most inconvenient time. They fought. "Last I heard of Lot he was sinking into the tomb. 'It's not the fighting,' he said to me. 'It's the darned monotony of the circus. He knows I can whip him, but he won't rest satisfied. 'Lay him out, Lot,' said I; 'fracture his cranium or gouge him. This show is foolish all round.' 'I can't lay him out,' said Lot. 'He's my father-in-law. But don't it strike you I've a deal to be thankful for? If he had been a Jew he'd have fought on Sundays when I was doing Deacon. I've been too gentle with him; the old man knows my spot place, but I've a deal to be thankful for.' "Strikes me that thankfulness of Lot's sort is nothing more nor less than cussed affectation. Say!" I said nothing. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 6: "Turnovers," Vol. VII.] A LITTLE MORE BEEF[7] "A little more beef, please," said the fat man with the grey whiskers and the spattered waistcoat. "You can't eat too much o' good beef--not even when the prices are going up hoof over hock." And he settled himself down to load in a fresh cargo. Now, this is how the fat man had come by his meal. One thousand miles away, a red Texan steer was preparing to go to bed for the night in the company of his fellows--myriads of his fellows. From dawn till late dusk he had loafed across the leagues of grass and grunted savagely as each mouthful proved to his mind that grass was not what he had known it in his youth. But the steer was wrong. That summer had brought great drought to Montana and Northern Dakota. The cattle feed was withering day by day, and the more prudent stock owners had written to the East for manufactured provender. Only the little cactus that grows with the grasses appeared to enjoy itself. The cattle certainly did not; and the cowboys from the very beginning of spring had used language considered profane even for the cowboy. What their ponies said has never been recorded. The ponies had the worst time of all, and at each nightly camp whispered to each other their longings for the winter, when they would be turned out on the freezing ranges--galled from wither to croup, but riderless--thank Heaven, riderless. On these various miseries the sun looked down impartial. His business was to cake the ground and ruin the grasses.