ervation which a more neutral listener would
unconsciously impel.

I am not going to give Mose's version, because he warped the story to
make it fit his own indignation, and did not do Ford justice. This,
then, is the exact truth:

Ford chanced to be walking up along the edge of the gully which ran past
the bunk-house, and into which empty cans and other garbage were thrown.
Sometimes a can fell short, so that all the gully edge was liberally
decorated with a gay assortment of canners' labels. Just as he had come
up, Mose had opened the kitchen door and thrown out a cream can, which
had fallen in front of Ford and trickled a white stream upon the frozen
ground. Ford had stooped and picked up the can, had shaken it, and heard
the slosh which told of waste. He had investigated further, and decided
that throwing out a cream can before it was quite empty was not an
accident with Mose, but might be termed a habit. He had taken Exhibit A
to the kitchen, but had laughed while he spoke of it. And these were his
exact words:

"Lordy me, Mose! Somebody's liable to come here and get rich off us, if
we don't look out. He'll gather up the cream cans you throw into the
discard and start a dairy on the leavings." Then he had set the can
down on the water bench beside the door and gone away.

"I've been cookin' for cow-camps ever since I got my knee stiffened up
so's't I couldn't ride--and that's sixteen year ago last Fourth--and
it's the first time I ever had any darned foreman go snoopin' around my
back door to see if I scrape out the cans clean!" Mose seated himself
upon a corner of the table with the stiff leg for a brace and the good
one swinging free, and folded his bare arms upon his heaving chest.

"And that ain't all, Dick," he went on aggrievedly. "He went and cut
down the order I give him for grub. That's something Ches never
done--not with me, anyway. Asked me--asked me, what I wanted with so
much choc'late. And I wanted boiled cider for m' mince-meat, and never
got it. And brandy, too--only I didn't put that down on the list; I
knowed better than to write it out. But I give Jim money--out uh my own
pocket!--to git some with, and he never done it. Said Ford told him
p'tic'ler not to bring out nothin' any nearer drinkable than lemon
extract! I've got a darned good mind," he added somberly, "to fire the
hull works into the gully. He don't belong on no cow ranch. Where he'd
oughta be is runnin' the W.C.T.U. So darned afra