're known by the 'Obar,' but some of
the language the boys fix to my brand 'ud set a Baptist minister
hollerin' help. Say, I can't hand you it all. I just can't, that's
all. 'Bill's Bughouse' is sort of skimmed milk to pea soup. Then
there's 'Bill's Boneyard.' That wouldn't offend any one but my
foreman. 'Busy Bee' kind of hands me a credit I don't guess I'm
entitled to. But there's others smack of the intelligence of badly
raised hogs." Then he laughed. "The truth is, when I first pitched
camp on Lime Creek I wasn't as wise to things ranching as a
Sunday-school committee. I lived mostly on beans an' bacon, and when
the boys fell in at night, why, I don't guess there was much beside
beans and bacon to keep 'em from falling into a state of coma on my
blankets. It generally fixed them right, and I'm bound to say they
never seemed to find they couldn't sit a saddle after it. Yes, and hit
the trail for fifty miles, if there was fresh meat at the end of it. I
sort of got known around as 'Beans and Bacon.' Then it was abbreviated
to B.B. And so when I registered my brand it just seemed natural to
set down B.B."

Nan's laugh was very genuine. Dugdale's ingenuous manner always
pleased her.

"You hadn't learned prairie hospitality," she said. "You surely were
committing a grave offense."

The man was full of pretended penitence.

"I don't guess that needed _learning_!" he said, with a wry smile.
"The boys just handed it to me same as a parson hands a heart-to-heart
talk on things you're hatin' to hear about. Oh, I was put wise quick.
But when you've got just about ten thousand dollars that's telling you
you're all sorts of a fool, and you're yearning for 'em to believe
you're a twin brother to Pierpont Morgan, why, you don't feel your
hide's made of gossamer, and don't care a cuss if folks start right in
to hammer tacks into it for shoe leather."

"And the dollars? You convinced them?" Nan's eyes were full of humor.

"Convinced 'em?" The man's eyes opened wide. "Say, Miss Tristram, it
was a mighty big argument. Oh, yes, and I guess there were times when
we come near bein' such bad friends that I wanted to hand 'em right on
to the nearest saloon-keeper I could find. But in the end I won. Oh,
I won. I just told 'em right out what I thought of 'em, and their
parents, and their ancestors, and their forthcoming progeny, and--that,
seemed to fix things. They got civil then. Sort of raised their hats,