After Red came Pete, waving a water-soaked boot. They disappeared and when Tex and his friends had almost reached the corral, Lee Hop rounded the same corner again, too frightened even to squeal. As he started around the next corner he jumped away at an angle, Pete, still waving the boot, missing him by inches. Pete checked his flow of language as he noticed the laughing group and started for it with a yell. A moment later Red came into sight, panting heavily, and also forgot the cook. Lee Hop stopped and watched the crowd, taking advantage of the opportunity to gain the cook shack and bar the door. "Dlam shirt no good—sclatchee like helle," he muttered. White men were strange—they loved each other like brothers and fought one another’s battles. "Led head! Led head!" he cried, derisively. "My hop you cloke! Hop you cloke chop-chop! No fliend my, savee?" Skinny Thompson, changing his trousers in the bunkroom, heard Lee’s remarks and laughed. Then he listened—somebody was doing a lot of talking. "They ’re loco, plumb loco, or else somethin’s wrong," and he hopped to the door. A bunched crowd of friends were tearing toward him, yelling and shooting and waving sombreros, and a second look made him again miss the trousers’ leg and hop through the door to save himself. The blood swept into his face as he saw the ranch house and he very promptly hopped back again, muttering angrily. The crowd dismounted at the door and tried to enter _en masse_; becoming sane it squirmed into separate units and entered as it should. Lee Hop hastily unbarred his door and again fled for his life. When he returned he walked boldly behind his foreman, and very close to him, gesticulating wildly and trying to teach Hopalong Cantonese. The foreman hated to chide his friends, but he and his wife were tired of turning the ranch house into a haven for Chinese cooks. As he opened the door he was grabbed and pushed up against a man who clouted him on the back and tried to crush his hand. "Hullo, Cassidy! Best sight I’ve laid eyes on since I left!" yelled the other above the noise. "Tex!" exclaimed Hopalong. "Well, I’m d—d! When did you get here? Going to stay? Got a job yet? How’d you like the East? Married? _I_ am—best thing I ever did. You look white—sick?" "City color—like the blasted collars and shirts," replied the other, still pumping the hand. "I ’m goin’ to stay, I ’m lookin’ for a job, an’ I ’d ruther punch cows for my keep than get rich in th’ East. It ’s all fence-country—can’t move without bumping into somebody or something—an’ noise! An’ crooked! They ’d steal th’ fillin’s out of yore teeth when you go to talk—an’ you won’t know it!" "Like to see ’em fool _me_!" grunted Johnny, looking savage. "Huh! Th’ new beginners ’d pick you out to practise on," snorted Red. "That yore shirt or mine?" he asked, suspiciously.