"Did anybody ever see that horse he's huntin'? He says it's a two-year-old filly that he thinks the world of. It's brown, with a star in its forehead, and one hip is knocked down. He never hunts anywhere except on that road past the school-house, and he stops at the pump each way--goin' and comin'. I never saw anybody with such a thirst. He looks in the window while he's drinkin', and swallows a gallon of water at a time, and don't know it." "Love is a turrible disease." Tubbs spoke with the emphasis of conviction. "It's worse'n lump-jaw er blackleg. It's dum nigh as bad as glanders. It's ketchin', too, and I holds that anybody that's got it bad ought to be dipped and quarantined. I knowed a feller over in Judith Basin what suffered agonies with it for two months, then shot hisself. There was seven of 'em tyin' their horses to the same Schoolmarm's hitchin'-post." "Take a long-geared Schoolmarm in a woolly Tam-o'-shanter, and she's a reg'lar storm-centre," vouchsafed the husky voice of "Banjo" Johnson. "They is! They is!" declared Meeteetse, with more feeling than the occasion seemed to warrant. The knob of a door adjoining the dining-room turned, and the grub-liners straightened in their chairs. Susie's eyes danced with mischief as she leaned toward Meeteetse and asked innocently: "They is _what_?" But with the opening of the door the voluble Meeteetse seemed to be stricken dumb. As a young woman came out, Smith stared, and instinctively McArthur half rose from his chair. Believing his employer contemplated flight, Tubbs laid a restraining hand upon his coat-tail, while inadvertently he turned his knife in his mouth with painful results.