“Pinch me, Humble, pinch me!” begged Bud. “I may be asleep and dreaming–here! What the devil do you think I am, you wart-headed coyote!” he yelled, dancing in pain and rubbing his leg frantically. “You blamed doodle bug, yu!”
“Well, I pinched you, didn’t I?” indignantly cried Humble. “What’s eating you? Didn’t you ask me to, you chump?”
“Hurry up and get that mail, Tom,” cried Jim. “It might spoil–and say, if she leads at you with that invite, clinch!”
Blake laughed and went off toward the corral. As he found the horse he wished to ride he heard a riot in the bunk-house and he laughed silently. A Virginia reel was in full swing and the noise was terrible. Riding past the window, he saw Silent working like a madman at his banjo; and assiduously playing a harmonica was The Orphan, all smiles and puffed-out cheeks.
“Well, The Orphan is all right now,” the foreman muttered as he swung out on the trail to Ford’s Station. “I reckon he’s found himself.”
In the bunk-house there was much hilarity, and laughter roared continually at the grotesque gymnastics of the reel and at the sharp wit which cut right and left, respecting no one save the new member of the outfit, and eventually he came in for his share, which he repaid with interest. Suddenly Jim, catching his spurs in a bear-skin rug which lay near a bunk, threw out his arms to save himself and then went sprawling to the floor. The uproar increased suddenly, and as it died down Jim could be heard complaining.
“–– ––!” he cried as he nursed his knee. “I’ve had that pelt for nigh onto three years and regularly I go and get tangled up with it. It shore beats all how I plumb forget its habit of wrapping itself around them rowels, what are too big, anyhow. And it ain’t a big one at that, only about half as big as the one I got for a tenderfoot up in Montanny,” he deprecated in disgust.
The outfit scented a story and became suddenly quiet.
“Dod-blasted postage stamp of a pelt,” he grumbled as he threw it into his bunk.
“The other skin couldn’t ’a’ been much bigger than that one,” said Bud, leading him on. “How big was it, anyhow, Jim?”