We would fight each other’s battles,
To each other’s aid we’d fly.”
“Oh, cut it out!” roared Buzzsaw. “Go file your voice.”
“That’s the tune the old cat died on,” cried South-paw.
“Something awful!” growled Warwhoop. “It would drive a man to murder.”
“These partitions are very thin,” said Gentle Willie. “I don’t think much of the old man bunking us in this place, when he might have put us up at the Antlers, the Alamo, or the Alta Vista.”
“Oh, what do you want, anyhow?” cried Warwhoop. “Do you want to be a howling swell? If he had put us up at any one of those places it would have cost him two or three times as much as it does here. Here the feed is good, the bed is fair, and I’m not kicking for some of the places we’ve bunked in. Let’s play poker.”
As the game got under way they were still further disturbed by a doleful, wailing chant which floated in from the adjoining room. Listening in spite of themselves, they heard something like this:
“No booka lo go dana,
No booka lo go dana,