Pete Wilson skillfully flipped a potato into that worthy's coffee, spilling the beverage of the questionable name over a large expanse of blue flannel shirt. “Yu's all right, yu are. Why, when I meets yu, yu was lost in th' arms of yore ladylove. All I could see was yore feet. Go an' git tangled up with a two hundred and forty pound half-breed squaw an' then try to lay it onter me! When I proposed drownin' yore troubles over at Cowan's, yu went an' got mad over what yu called th' insinooation. An' yu shore didn't look any too blamed fine, neither.” “All th' same,” volunteered Thompson, who had taken the edge from his appetite, “we better go over an' pay C 80 a call. I don't like what Shorty said about saltin' our cattle. He'll shore do it, unless I camps on th' line, which same I hain't hankerin' after.” “Oh, he wouldn't stop th' cows that way, Skinny; he was only afoolin',” exclaimed Connors meekly. “Foolin' yore gran'mother! That there bunch'll do anything if we wasn't lookin',” hotly replied Skinny. “That's shore nuff gospel, Thomp. They's sore fer mor'n one thing. They got aplenty when Buck went on th' warpath, an they's hankerin' to git square,” remarked Johnny Nelson, stealing the pie, a rare treat, of his neighbor when that unfortunate individual was not looking. He had it halfway to his mouth when its former owner, Jimmy Price, a boy of eighteen, turned his head and saw it going. “Hi-yi! Yu clay-bank coyote, drap thet pie! Did yu ever see such a son-of-a-gun fer pie?” he plaintively asked Red Connors, as he grabbed a mighty handful of apples and crust. “Pie'll kill yu some day, yu bob-tailed jack! I had an uncle that died onct. He et too much pie an' he went an' turned green, an so'll yu if yu don't let it alone.” “Yu ought'r seed th' pie Johnny had down in Eagle Flat,” murmured Lanky Smith reminiscently. “She had feet that'd stop a stampede. Johnny was shore loco about her. Swore she was the finest blossom that ever growed.” Here he choked and tears of laughter coursed down his weather-beaten face as he pictured her. “She was a dainty Mexican, about fifteen han's high an' about sixteen han's around. Johnny used to chalk off when he hugged her, usen't yu, Johnny? One night when he had got purty well around on th' second lap he run inter a feller jest startin' out on his fust. They hain't caught that Mexican yet.” Nelson was pelted with everything in sight. He slowly wiped off the pie crust and bread and potatoes. “Anybody'd think I was a busted grub wagon,” he grumbled. When he had fished the last piece of beef out of his ear he went out and offered to stand treat. As the round-up was over, they slid into their saddles and raced for Cowan's saloon at Buckskin. CHAPTER II. The Rashness of Shorty