Roarer's childish accents pleaded, "Can't you help me get into this collar? It's the only one we got left that's fitten to put on, and it ain't big enough for this shirt, nor me, neither, but I've got to get into it somehow."
Holy inspected the dilemma. "I'll go see if I kin find something," he said vaguely as he left the room. In a few minutes he returned.
"I got a button-hook off'n the chambermaid. We can fix it up now!"
Surrounded by an admiring group, he grasped the collar band of Roarer's shirt, thrust the button-hook through the button-hole of the collar and gave a vigorous twist.
An agonized squeal, like a dying pig, assaulted the air and Roarer retreated rapidly with the button-hook hanging to the collar, while he rubbed the prominent bone in his throat that had interfered with the adjustment.
"What in thunder do you think you're doin'?" he piped, glaring at Holy. "Looks like you was figgerin' to make cider outen my Adam's apple, the way you squoze."
"Well, I done the best I knowed how," defended Holy. "That's the way things goes. I pulled an ol' Bar Z cow outen the mud, and the fust thing the durned cow done was to make a bee-line for me whilst I had my back to her a cinchin' my saddle. She spiled the only pair of trousers I owned, and then went back into the mudhole and died. Thar's a heap of human nature in cows, and heaps of cow nature in humans! Here's the button-hook." Holy rescued it from the floor where it had dropped as Roarer massaged his throat. "You dig yourself outen your own mud-hold. I'm done!"
He limped painfully across the room and dropped into a chair, the picture of disgust, and watched with fishy eye as Roarer plied the button-hook until the collar succumbed.
The agony was almost over, but the four pairs of gloves promised further trouble.
"Say, Bronc," insinuated Roarer as he contemplated the bed, "Couldn't a feller go without wearin' these derned things? Suppose we just put 'em in the outside pockets of our coats and let the fingers hang out, to show we got 'em?"