“Yes, it was a case of revenge,” resumed the Virginian, “and disease. There was a man named Saynt Augustine got run out of Domingo, which is a Dago island. He come to Philadelphia, an’ he was dead broke. But Saynt Augustine was a live man, an’ he saw Philadelphia was full o’ Quakers that dressed plain an’ eat humdrum. So he started cookin’ Domingo way for ’em, an’ they caught right ahold. Terrapin, he gave ’em, an’ croakeets, an’ he’d use forty chickens to make a broth he called consommay. An’ he got rich, and Philadelphia got well known, an’ Delmonico in New York he got jealous. He was the cook that had the say-so in New York.” “Was Delmonico one of them I-talians?” inquired a fascinated mutineer. “I don’t know. But he acted like one. Lorenzo was his front name. He aimed to cut--” “Domingo’s throat?” breathed the enthusiast. “Aimed to cut away the trade from Saynt Augustine an’ put Philadelphia back where he thought she belonged. Frawgs was the fashionable rage then. These foreign cooks set the fashion in eatin’, same as foreign dressmakers do women’s clothes. Both cities was catchin’ and swallowin’ all the frawgs Tulare could throw at ’em. So he--” “Lorenzo?” said the enthusiast. “Yes, Lorenzo Delmonico. He bid a dollar a tank higher. An’ Saynt Augustine raised him fifty cents. An’ Lorenzo raised him a dollar. An’ Saynt Augustine shoved her up three. Lorenzo he didn’t expect Philadelphia would go that high, and he got hot in the collar, an’ flew round his kitchen in New York, an’ claimed he’d twist Saynt Augustine’s Domingo tail for him and crack his ossified system. Lorenzo raised his language to a high temperature, they say. An’ then quite sudden off he starts for Tulare. He buys tickets over the Santa Fe, and he goes a-fannin’ and a-foggin’. But, gentlemen, hush! The very same day Saynt Augustine he tears out of Philadelphia. He travelled by the way o’ Washington, an’ out he comes a-fannin’ an’ a-foggin’ over the Southern Pacific. Of course Tulare didn’t know nothin’ of this. All it knowed was how the frawg market was on soarin’ wings, and it was feelin’ like a flight o’ rawckets. If only there’d been some preparation,--a telegram or something,--the disaster would never have occurred. But Lorenzo and Saynt Augustine was that absorbed watchin’ each other--for, yu’ see, the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific come together at Mojave, an’ the two cooks travelled a matter of two hundred an’ ten miles in the same cyar--they never thought about a telegram. And when they arruv, breathless, an’ started in to screechin’ what they’d give for the monopoly, why, them unsuspectin’ Tulare boys got amused at ’em. I never heard just all they done, but they had Lorenzo singin’ and dancin’, while Saynt Augustine played the fiddle for him. And one of Lorenzo’s heels did get a trifle grazed. Well, them two cooks quit that ranch without disclosin’ their identity, and soon as they got to a safe