LITMIR.BIZ

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one of his unexpected retorts.

      “I was just wonderin’, by golly, where yuh learnt to talk!”

      Miguel turned his velvet eyes sleepily toward the speaker. “From the boarders who ate those parrots, amigo,” he smiled serenely.

      At this, Slim—once justly accused by Irish of being a “single-shot” when it came to repartee—turned purple and dumb. The Happy Family, forswearing loyalty in their enjoyment of his discomfiture, grinned and left to Miguel the barren triumph of the last word.

      He did not gain in popularity as the days passed. They tilted noses at his beautiful riding gear, and would have died rather than speak of it in his presence. They never gossiped with him of horses or men or the lands he knew. They were ready to snub him at a moment’s notice—and it did not lessen their dislike of him that he failed to yield them an opportunity. It is to be hoped that he found his thoughts sufficient entertainment, since he was left to them as much as is humanly possible when half a dozen men eat and sleep and work together. It annoyed them exceedingly that Miguel did not seem to know that they held him at a distance; they objected to his manner of smoking cigarettes and staring off at the skyline as if he were alone and content with his dreams. When he did talk they listened with an air of weary tolerance. When he did not talk they ignored his presence, and when he was absent they criticized him mercilessly.

      They let him ride unwarned into an adobe patch one day—at least, Big Medicine, Pink, Cal Emmett and Irish did, for they were with him—and laughed surreptitiously together while he wallowed there and came out afoot, his horse floundering behind him, mud to the ears, both of them.

      “Pretty soft going, along there, ain’t it?” Pink commiserated deceitfully.

      “It is, kinda,” Miguel responded evenly, scraping the adobe off Banjo with a flat rock. And the subject was closed.

      “Well, it’s some relief to the eyes to have the shine taken off him, anyway,” Pink observed a little guiltily afterward.

      “I betche he ain’t goin’ to forget that, though,” Happy Jack warned when he saw the caked mud on Miguel’s Angora chaps and silver spurs, and the condition of his saddle. “Yuh better watch out and not turn your backs on him in the dark, none uh you guys. I betche he packs a knife. Them kind always does.”

      “Haw-haw-haw!” bellowed Big Medicine uproariously. “I’d love to see him git out an’ try to use it, by cripes!”

      “I wish Andy was here,” Pink sighed. “Andy’d take the starch outa him, all right.”

      “Wouldn’t he be pickings for old Andy, though? Gee!” Cal looked around at them, with his wide, baby-blue eyes, and laughed. “Let’s kinda jolly him along, boys, till Andy gets back. It sure would be great to watch ’em. I’ll bet he can jar the eternal calm outa that Native Son. That’s what grinds me worse than his throwin’ on so much dog; he’s so blamed satisfied with himself! You snub him, and he looks at yuh as if you was his hired man—and then forgets all about yuh. He come outa that ’doby like he’d been swimmin’ a river on a bet, and had made good and was a hee-ro right before the ladies. Kinda ‘Oh, that’s nothing to what I could do if it was worth while,’ way he had with him.”

      “It wouldn’t matter so much if he wasn’t all front,” Pink complained. “You’ll notice that’s always the way, though. The fellow all fussed up with silver and braided leather can’t get out and do anything. I remember up on Milk river—” Pink trailed off into absorbing reminiscence, which, however, is too lengthy to repeat here.

      “Say, Mig-u-ell’s down at the stable, sweatin from every pore trying to get his saddle clean, by golly!” Slim reported cheerfully, just as Pink was relighting the cigarette which had gone out during the big scene of his story. “He was cussin’ in Spanish, when I walked up to him—but he shut up when he seen me and got that peaceful look uh hisn on his face. I wonder, by golly—”

      “Oh, shut up and go awn,” Irish commanded bluntly, and looked at Pink. “Did he call it off, then? Or did you have to wade in—”

      “Naw; he was like this here Native Son—all front. He could look sudden death, all right; he had black eyes like Mig-u-ell—but all a fellow had to do was go after him, and he’d back up so blamed quick—”

      Slim listened that far, saw that he had interrupted a tale evidently more interesting than anything he could say, and went off, muttering to himself.

      CHAPTER II

      “When Greek Meets Greek”

      The next morning, which was Sunday, the machinations of Big Medicine took Pink down to the creek behind the bunk-house. “What’s hurtin’ yuh?” he asked curiously, when he came to where Big Medicine stood in the fringe of willows, choking between his spasms of mirth.

      “Haw-haw-haw!” roared Big Medicine; and, seizing Pink’s arm in a gorilla-like grip, he pointed down the bank.

      Miguel, seated upon a convenient rock in a sunny spot, was painstakingly combing out the tangled hair of his chaps, which he had washed quite as carefully not long before, as the cake of soap beside him testified.

      “Combing—combing—his chaps, by cripes!” Big Medicine gasped, and waggled his finger at the spectacle. “Haw-haw-haw! C-combin’—his—chaps!”

      Miguel glanced up at them as impersonally as if they were two cackling hens, rather than derisive humans, then bent his head over a stubborn knot and whistled La Paloma softly while he coaxed out the tangle.

      Pink’s eyes widened as he looked, but he did not say anything. He backed up the path and went thoughtfully to the corrals, leaving Big Medicine to follow or not, as he chose.

      “Combin’—his chaps, by cripes!” came rumbling behind him. Pink turned.

      “Say! Don’t make so much noise about it,” he advised guardedly. “I’ve got an idea.”

      “Yuh want to hog-tie it, then,” Big Medicine retorted, resentful because Pink seemed not to grasp the full humor of the thing. “Idees sure seems to be skurce in this outfit—or that there lily-uh-the-valley couldn’t set and comb no chaps in broad daylight, by cripes; not and get off with it.”

      “He’s an ornament to the Flying U,” Pink stated dreamily. “Us boneheads don’t appreciate him, is all that ails us. What we ought to do is—help him be as pretty as he wants to be, and—”

      “Looky here, Little One.” Big Medicine hurried his steps until he was close alongside. “I wouldn’t give a punched nickel for a four-horse load uh them idees, and that’s the truth.” He passed Pink and went on ahead, disgust in every line of his square-shouldered figure. “Combin’ his chaps, by cripes!” he snorted again, and straightway told the tale profanely to his fellows, who laughed until they were weak and watery-eyed as they listened.

      Afterward, because Pink implored them and made a mystery of it, they invited Miguel to take a hand in a long-winded game—rather, a series of games—of seven-up, while his chaps hung to dry upon a willow by the creek bank—or so he believed.

      The chaps, however, were up in the white-house kitchen, where were also the reek of scorched hair and the laughing expostulations of the Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink and Irish, who were curling laboriously the chaps of Miguel with the curling tongs of the Little Doctor and those of the Countess besides.

      “It’s a shame, and I just hope Miguel thrashes you both for it,” the Little Doctor told them more than once; but she laughed, nevertheless, and showed Pink how to give the twist which made of each lock a corkscrew ringlet. The Countess stopped, with her dishcloth dangling from one red, bony hand, while she looked. “You boys couldn’t sleep nights if you didn’t pester the life outa somebody,” she scolded. “Seems to me I’d friz them diamonds, if I was goin’ to be mean enough to do anything.”

      “You would, eh?” Pink glanced up at her and dimpled. “I’ll find you a rich husband to pay for that.” He straightway

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