'Yes, that's it.'
'Wal,' said the old man slowly, 'I've heerd of Houses of Parliament being blowed up by dynamite, but I never heerd tell of a ranche being bust up by Borwick's baking-powder afore!'
CHAPTER X
AFTER SCRUB CATTLE
That first night Snap was glad enough to get to bed. Not that he was sleepy; on the contrary, tired out as he was, he was preternaturally wideawake. Everything was so new to him, and, besides, that horrible Borwick was still an unquiet spirit within him. The cowboys of the North-West are probably the only possible rivals to the ostrich in the matter of digestion still extant. Like the ostrich, they could safely dine on door-nails and sup on soda-water bottles, so that they had already forgotten Borwick and were snoring peacefully. Snap wished he could imitate them. The bed in which he found himself combined all the advantages of a bed and a thermometer. Founded upon pine boards, it consisted of five pairs of blankets. In summer heat you slept on one blanket out of doors. In temperate weather you slept under one indoors. As it grew colder the number of blankets above you increased, until four above (with a buffalo-robe) and one below indicated blizzards and frostbite on the prairie.
It seemed to Snap that just as he was going off to sleep someone struck a match, lit a pipe, and then began lighting the fire. This was old Wharton, but he let the boy lie (being a charitable old soul) until he roused him up with:
'Now, lazybones, you can wash in the crik outside if you've a mind to, only breakfast is ready.'
Snap hopped out of his blankets and ran down to the crik, although no one else seemed to care about it, and so biting was the cold that he felt it would have been worth his last dollar to be allowed to take a hand at the wood-chopping going on outside. The worst of it was that he couldn't chop 'worth a cent,' as big Frank Atkins informed him, and indeed, although he hit the log all over and with every part of the axe, it seemed even to Snap that he made very small progress. The sense of his own uselessness was getting absolutely oppressive to the boy as it was borne in upon him more and more that even cooking, chopping, and such like, want learning, and don't come naturally to any of us.
Breakfast was a short ceremony—bacon and jam—'trapper's jam,' that is, made from bacon grease and a spoonful of brown sugar, washed down with a huge draught of weak tea. After this everyone lit his pipe, and old Wharton, turning to Snap, said:
'You may as well go along with the boys to meet Tony and the rest with them scrub cattle. They're a bit short-handed, and I can't go myself; the boss will be making things hum here up at the ranche for the next day or two.'