"Water," prompted Holy from his corner, his head and arms protruding from the paper making him resemble a huge turtle. "I knowed you'd forget that." Bronco's ire found vent in a few words borrowed from Holy's vocabulary, and Limber, mounted on a box, turned from inspecting the cupboard to say: "If we're goin' to paper this room, you two quit scrapin' and get down to business. If you ain't, jest say so, and I'll set Manuel to whitewashin' it." His threat had the desired effect. Bronco appealed to Limber, "Larry told me to mix it like biscuit dough and thin it out with water. There was somethin' else but I've plumb forgot it, Limber." "Well, try lard, then," suggested Limber, poking his head back in the cupboard and scanning the contents hoping to find the missing article, even though it were necessary to add everything on the shelves. "How about some niggerfoot molasses?" "Lard's all right," replied Bronco, "but niggerfoot don't go in biscuits." "Well, it goes on top of 'em pretty slick, and it's good and sticky, so it oughter be a good thing to put in," persisted Limber, holding out the can. "Mebbe Larry forgot to tell you to use it." "Jest a leetle bit," conceded Bronco, wishing heartily that Limber would insist upon whitewashing the room; but not brave enough to suggest it himself. It had taken him two years to live down the episode of the buckskin cow, and he knew that Holy and Roarer would make life a burden if he confessed his inability to finish the work he had so recklessly undertaken. He watched the black molasses trickle into the contents of the tub until the last drop had fallen. Limber ascended the box again. "Thar's another can of niggerfoot. Don't be stingy with it Bronc," admonished Limber. Bronco had not the courage to negative any suggestion, but he groped mentally, "It was a short word," he told Limber with a faint gleam of hope. "Dam!" exploded Holy. "Jest look at this dod-ratted, twistin' paper, will you? Talk about your Hopi snake-dancers, they ain't in it with me! Where am I at?" he demanded from a labyrinth of paper coils. Bronco was glad of the chance to assume knowledge that he did not possess, much as a small boy bolsters up his ebbing courage in a dark lane by whistling loudly. "I told you to cut the edges straight," he announced oracularly, "and these year look like a cross-eyed maverick had been usin' a circular saw to cut wall-paper for a merry-go-round. Why that paper would give a minister a jag to look at it!" "If one of you fellers would hog-tie that end whilst I get a diamond-hitch on this'n, I mought have some show," defended Holy feebly. Roarer went to the rescue and gripped one end of a roll while Holy conscientiously proceeded to mutilate the edges and succeeded in making the scallops a trifle smaller. Limber and Bronco resumed their consultation. "I bet it was yeast," jubilated Limber. "We all forgot about that, and it's a short word, sure enough."