"Like a big boy," she laughed to herself, "when he begins to wash his neck and ears!"
"It ain't healthy to have your teeth so dirty," Old Heck explained, coloring and in an apologizing manner, when Skinny discovered him, after supper that evening, carefully scrubbing his molars.
Skinny watched the performance, saw the result, and murmured:
"Guess I'll get me one of them layouts!"
On Friday the quartette went to Eagle Butte, Old Heck driving, with
Ophelia beside him, and Carolyn June and Skinny in the rear seat of the
Clagstone "Six."
It was on this trip, while Ophelia and Carolyn June were in the Golden Rule doing some shopping, that Old Heck and Skinny strolled into the Elite Amusement Parlor. Lafe Dorsey, owner of the Y-Bar outfit and to whom belonged the black Thunderbolt horse; Newt Johnson, Dave Stover and "Flip" Williams—the latter three cowboys on the big Vermejo ranch—were playing a four-handed game of billiards at one of the tables near the front of the place.
Dorsey noticed the entrance of the pair from the Quarter Circle KT. All were range men and were well known to one another. The Y-Bar owner had been drinking. Boot-leg liquor was obtainable, if one knew how and where, in Eagle Butte.
"Hello, there, Old Heck!" Dorsey greeted them hilariously and with a half-leer. "Howdy, Skinny! How's the Cimarron? Don't reckon you've taught Old Quicksilver to run yet, have you?" with a boisterous laugh as he referred to the race in which Thunderbolt had defeated Old Heck's crack stallion.
The taunt stung Old Heck while it called out a suppressed snicker from the cowboys who were with Dorsey and the loafers in the pool-room. The bull-like guffaw of Mike Sabota, the gorilla-built, half-Greek proprietor of the Amusement Parlor roared out above the ripple of laughter from the others. The racing feud between the Y-Bar and the Quarter Circle KT was well known to all and Sabota himself had cleaned up a neat sum when the black horse from the Vermejo had outstepped the runner from the Quarter Circle KT.
Old Heck reddened at Dorsey's words but replied quietly: