"And don't mistake me," concluded Belding, "just keep out of earshot when Laddy tells us the story of that desert trip, unless you're hankering to have your hair turn pure white and stand curled on end and freeze that way."
About the middle of the forenoon on the following day the rangers hobbled out of the kitchen to the porch.
"I'm a sick man, I tell you," Ladd was complaining, "an' I gotta be fed. Soup! Beef tea! That ain't so much as wind to me. I want about a barrel of bread an' butter, an' a whole platter of mashed potatoes with gravy an' green stuff—all kinds of green stuff—an' a whole big apple pie. Give me everythin' an' anythin' to eat but meat. Shore I never, never want to taste meat again, an' sight of a piece of sheep meat would jest about finish me.... Jim, you used to be a human bein' that stood up for Charlie Ladd."
"Laddy, I'm lined up beside you with both guns," replied Jim, plaintively. "Hungry? Say, the smell of breakfast in that kitchen made my mouth water so I near choked to death. I reckon we're gettin' most onhuman treatment."
"But I'm a sick man," protested Ladd, "an' I'm agoin' to fall over in a minute if somebody doesn't feed me. Nell, you used to be fond of me."
"Oh, Laddy, I am yet," replied Nell.
"Shore I don't believe it. Any girl with a tender heart just couldn't let a man starve under her eyes... Look at Dick, there. I'll bet he's had something to eat, mebbe potatoes an' gravy, an' pie an'—"
"Laddy, Dick has had no more than I gave you—indeed, not nearly so much."
"Shore he's had a lot of kisses then, for he hasn't hollered onct about this treatment."
"Perhaps he has," said Nell, with a blush; "and if you think that—they would help you to be reasonable I might—I'll—"