“Bet he sneaked up on him,” joshed Buck Peters; “did yu ask his pardin, Skinny?”
“Ask nuthin',” remarked Red, “he jest nachurly walks up to C 80 an' sez, 'Kin I have the pleasure of ventilatin' yu?' an' C So he sez, 'If yu do it easy like,' sez he. Didn't he, Thompson?”
“They'll be some ventilatin' under th' table if yu fellows don't lemme alone; I'm hungry,” complained Skinny.
“Say, Hopalong, I bets yu I kin clean up C 80 all by my lonesome,” announced Buck, winking at Red.
“Yah! Yu onct tried to clean up the Bend, Buckie, an' if Pete an' Billy hadn't afound yu when they come by Eagle Pass that night yu wouldn't be here eatin' beef by th' pound,” glancing at the hard-working Hopalong. “It was plum lucky fer yu that they was acourtin' that time, wasn't it, Hopalong?” suddenly asked Red. Hopalong nearly strangled in his efforts to speak. He gave it up and nodded his head.
“Why can't yu git it straight, Connors? I wasn't doin' no courtin', it was Pete. I runned into him on th' other side o' th' pass. I'd look fine acourtin', wouldn't I?” asked the downtrodden Williams.
Pete Wilson skillfully flipped a potato into that worthy's coffee, spilling the beverage of the questionable name over a large expanse of blue flannel shirt. “Yu's all right, yu are. Why, when I meets yu, yu was lost in th' arms of yore ladylove. All I could see was yore feet. Go an' git tangled up with a two hundred and forty pound half-breed squaw an' then try to lay it onter me! When I proposed drownin' yore troubles over at Cowan's, yu went an' got mad over what yu called th' insinooation. An' yu shore didn't look any too blamed fine, neither.”
“All th' same,” volunteered Thompson, who had taken the edge from his appetite, “we better go over an' pay C 80 a call. I don't like what Shorty said about saltin' our cattle. He'll shore do it, unless I camps on th' line, which same I hain't hankerin' after.”
“Oh, he wouldn't stop th' cows that way, Skinny; he was only afoolin',” exclaimed Connors meekly.
“Foolin' yore gran'mother! That there bunch'll do anything if we wasn't lookin',” hotly replied Skinny.