The following morning, Whitey was up almost with the sun, but he found the ranch already astir. Mr. Sherwood was busy over the ranch accounts when Whitey went in to breakfast. It needed very little persuasion on the part of the shuffling, grinning Sing Wong to induce him to put away a bigger breakfast than he had ever had before in his life. Twenty-four hours in that mountain air would give an appetite to a mummy, and Whitey was far from being a mummy. Bill Jordan watched him stow away plate after plate of flap-jacks and honey in addition to bacon and eggs and milk, and finally said with an anxious shake of his head, that the ranch would have to do a bigger business than ever if Whitey intended to make a long visit.
"Mr. Jordan," said Whitey, pausing to get his breath, and accepting with some hesitation "just one more plate" of flap-jacks, "I don't believe I'll ever want to go back!"
Bill threw up his hands in a gesture of despair, and "allowed as how, if that was the case, he'd haf' to raise Sing Wong's wages, or else see about getting him an assistant!"
Whitey laughed and assured Bill that he hadn't been very hungry that morning, but when he got down to business, he'd show him how a really hungry boy could eat.
"It's a pity you wasn't here 'bout a year or so ago," said Bill. "We could o' made a clean-up with you!"
"How is that?" asked Whitey.
"Well," said Bill, "we had a feller here who was some strong as a table-finisher an' bone-polisher, an' we issued a challenge to eat him agin any man in the West. He et like nine starvin' Cubans, an' then some! It looked like he could spot most anybody three er four good-sized steaks an' then win pulled-up. But the' was a 'hayseed' blowed in one day an' offered to eat him fer consider'ble change. They set down to make the terms and specifications o' the eatin' contest, an' our man says, 'What'll we begin with?' An' the other feller says, 'Well, suppose we start on hams?' 'All right,' says our champion, 'how many slices?' 'Slices!' says the other guy, contemptuous like, 'slices! I didn't say nuthin' 'bout slices! I said hams!'
"Well, sir, that settled it! Our man give this feller one look an' crawfished right there! He snuk out an' got on his pinto, an' we ain't never saw him sence. Now, if yo'd a bin here——" and Bill shrugged his shoulders and made a deprecatory gesture that indicated that a real eater, like Whitey, never would have allowed "hams" to faze him.
"Mebbe we better issue another challenge?" added Bill, tentatively. "Yo' won't need much trainin'!"
"I'm not very fond of hams," said Whitey, "but if he'll start on steers I'll accommodate him!"