"Ask Slim; he had it last. Ain't Shorty here, yet?" Cal turned again to Patsy, whose outcries were not nice to listen to, "Stay with it, old-timer; we'll have something hot to pour down yuh in a minute." Patsy replied, but pain made him incoherent. Cal caught the word "poison", and then "corn"; the rest of the sentence was merely a succession of groans. The face of Cal lengthened perceptibly. He got up and went out to where the others were wrangling with Slim over the missing bottle of liniment. "I guess the old boy's up against it good and plenty," he announced gravely. "He says he's poisoned; he says it was the corn." "Well he had it coming to him," declared Jack Pates. "He's stuck that darned canned corn under our noses every meal since round-up started. He--" "Oh, shut up," snarled Cal. "I guess it won't be so funny if he cashes in on the strength of it. I've known two or three fellows that was laid out cold with tin-can poison. It's sure fierce." The Happy Family shifted uneasily before the impending tragedy, and their faces paled a little; for nearly every man of the range dreads ptomaine poisoning more than the bite of a rattler. One can kill a rattler, and one is always warned of its presence; but one never can tell what dire suffering may lurk beneath the gay labels of canned goods. But since one must eat, and since canned vegetables are far and away better than no vegetables at all, the Happy Family ate and took their chance--only they did not eat canned corn, and they had discussed the matter profanely and often with Patsy. Patsy was a slave of precedent. Many seasons had he cooked beneath a round-up tent, and never had he stocked the mess-wagon for a long trip and left canned corn off the list. It was good to his palate and it was easy to prepare, and no argument could wean him from imperturbably opening can after can, eating plentifully of it himself and throwing the rest to feed the gophers. "Ain't there anything to give him?" asked Jack, relenting. "That Three-H would fix him up all right--" "Dig it up, then," snapped Cal. "There's sure something got to be done, or we'll have a dead cook on our hands." "Not even a drop uh whisky in camp!" mourned Weary. "Slim, you ought to be killed for getting away with that liniment." Slim was too downhearted to resent the tone. "By golly, I can't think what I done with it after I used it on Banjo. Seems like I stood it on that rock--" "Oh, hell!" snorted Cal. "That's forty miles back." "Say, it's sure a fright!" sympathized Jack Bates as a muffled shriek came through the cloth wall of the tent. "What's good for tincaneetis, I wonder?" "A rattling good doctor," retorted Chip, throwing things recklessly about, still searching. "There goes the damn butter--pick it up, Cal." "If old Dock was sober, he could do something," suggested Weary. "I guess I'd better go after him; what do yuh think?"