“Frying eggs,” Smoke informed him, breaking the second one and throwing off Shorty's detaining hand. “What's the matter with your eyesight? Did you think I was combing my hair?”
“Don't you feel well?” Shorty queried anxiously, as Smoke broke a third egg and dexterously thrust him back with a stiff-arm jolt on the breast. “Or are you just plain loco? That's thirty dollars' worth of eggs already.”
“And I'm going to make it sixty dollars' worth,” was the answer, as Smoke broke the fourth. “Get out of the way, Shorty. Wild Water's coming up the hill, and he'll be here in five minutes.”
Shorty sighed vastly with commingled comprehension and relief, and sat down at the table. By the time the expected knock came at the door, Smoke was facing him across the table, and, before each, was a plate containing three hot, fried eggs.
“Come in!” Smoke called.
Wild Water Charley, a strapping young giant just a fraction of an inch under six feet in height and carrying a clean weight of one hundred and ninety pounds, entered and shook hands.
“Set down an' have a bite, Wild Water,” Shorty invited. “Smoke, fry him some eggs. I'll bet he ain't scoffed an egg in a coon's age.”
Smoke broke three more eggs into the hot pan, and in several minutes placed them before his guest, who looked at them with so strange and strained an expression that Shorty confessed afterward his fear that Wild Water would slip them into his pocket and carry them away.
“Say, them swells down in the States ain't got nothin' over us in the matter of eats,” Shorty gloated. “Here's you an' me an' Smoke gettin' outside ninety dollars' worth of eggs an' not battin' an eye.”
Wild Water stared at the rapidly disappearing eggs and seemed petrified.