Alta came after him, quickly, with pacific intent. She was a tall girl, not very well filled out, like an immature bean pod. Her heavy black hair was cut in a waterfall of bangs which came down to her eyebrows, the rest of it done up behind in loops like sausages, and fastened with a large, red ribbon. She had put off her apron, and stood forth in white, her sleeves much shorter than the arms which reached out of them, rings on her fingers which looked as if they would leave their shadows behind. "Now, Mr. Jedlick, I don't want you to go raisin' no fuss around here with the guests," she said. "Jedlick!" repeated Taterleg, turning to Lambert with a pained, depressed look on his face. "It sounds like something you blow in to make a noise." The barber's customer was a taller man standing than he was long lying. There wasn't much clearance between his head and the ceiling of the porch. He stood before Taterleg glowing, his hat off, his short-cut hair glistening with pomatum, showing his teeth like a vicious horse. "You look like you was cut out with a can-opener," he sneered. "Maybe I was, and I've got rough edges on me," Taterleg returned, looking up at him with calculative eye. "Now, Mr. Jedlick"--a hand on his arm, but confident of the force of it, like a lady animal trainer in a cage of lions--"you come on over here and set down and leave that gentleman alone." "If anybody but you'd 'a' said it, Alta, I'd 'a' told him he was a liar," Jedlick growled. He moved his foot to go with her, stopped, snarled at Taterleg again. "I used to roll 'em in flour and swaller 'em with the feathers on," said he. "You're a terrible rough feller, ain't you?" Taterleg inquired with cutting sarcasm. Alta led Jedlick off to his corner; Taterleg and Lambert entered the hotel office. "Gee, but this is a windy night!" said the Duke, holding his hat on with both hands. "I'll let some of the wind out of him if he monkeys with me!" "Looks to me like I know another feller that an operation wouldn't hurt," the Duke remarked, turning a sly eye on his friend. The landlord appeared with a lamp to light them to their beds, putting an end to these exchanges of threat and banter. As he was leaving them to their double-barreled apartment, Lambert remarked: "That man Jedlick's an interesting-lookin' feller." "Ben Jedlick? Yes, Ben's a case; he's quite a case." "What business does he foller?" "Ben? Ben's cook on Pat Sullivan's ranch up the river; one of the best camp cooks in the Bad Lands, and I guess the best known, without any doubt." Taterleg sat down on the side of his bed as if he had been punctured, indeed, lopping forward in mock attitude of utter collapse as the landlord closed the door. "Cook! That settles it for me; I've turned the last flapjack I'll ever turn for any man but myself." "How will you manage the oyster parlor?" "Well, I've just about give up that notion, Duke. I've been thinkin' I'll stick to the range and go in the sheep business."