"Right," said Slick, and he led the way into the hall and toward a bedroom at the rear. Chesty Sutton stood in the doorway of the dining-room. "Better git in on th' jump, Cheyenne," he advised, anxiously. "Bow-Wow 's that savage, he's boltin' his grub in chunks an' there ain't goin' to be a whole lot left for stragglers."
"Muzzle him," replied Buck, over his saddle-weighted shoulder, while Slick only grinned, "If I goes hungry, I eats Bow-Wow. Dog ain't so bad." Chesty chuckled and returned to the sulky Bow-Wow with the warning.
Despite Chesty's fears, there was plenty to eat and to spare. Little talking was done, as every one was hungry, with the possible exception of Ned, and even he would have passed for a hungry man. Sandy McQueen and the cook officiated and the race was so nearly a dead heat that the first to finish was hardly across the hall before the last pushed his chair back from the table.
An immediate adjournment to the bar-room was the customary withdrawal, and Buck, doing as the others, found Ned in his former seat beside a table. Buck joined him and showed such an evident desire for privacy that the others forbore to intrude.
"Ned," said Buck, leaning towards him across the table, "it ain't none of my business, an' it ain't as I 'm just curious, but was that straight, what you said about bein' broke?"
"That's straight," Ned assured him, gloomily.
"An' lookin' for a job?" asked Buck, quietly.
"You bet," was the emphatic reply.
"Chesty said as how he used to work for you. Was you foreman?"
"I was foreman an' boss of the NM ranch till them blood-suckers back East druv me off 'n it—d—n 'em."