"My! my!" grinned Jess, but it was an uncomfortable sort of a grin, "hear the little boy with the medal talk. Come on, Clark, let's go see to the ponies while the tenderfeet wait for their nurse to come and take their bibs off."
They rose from the table, but Rob, still inwardly raging but outwardly cool as ice, stopped them.
"Say," he said, "are you fellows cattlemen?"
"You bet, stranger, from the ground up," rejoined Clark, with a vast air of self-importance.
"Well, then we've been misinformed in the East," said Rob, coolly brushing a few stray crumbs from his knees.
"Why, we'd been told that cattlemen were natural gentlemen; but whoever told us that was dead wrong. Judging by you fellows, they're not natural, and certainly not the other thing."
Clark's face grew crimson and he muttered something about "fixing the fresh kid," but his companion drew him away.
"We'll have plenty of time to rope and brand these young mavericks," he said, as they left the room.
As they vanished Rob burst into a shout of laughter.