s called a peer of the realm, which means, in his own country, that
he is just nacherally entitled from the start to h'ist his nose high.

"The outfit he was goin' to visit wasn't in the habit of havin' peers drop
in on them casual, but they aimed to make him feel that he wasn't the
first of the herd that headed that way by a quart"--she cut four biscuits
with a tin cup, and resumed--"to which end they rounded up every specimen
of canned food that's ever come across the Rockies.

"'Let him ask for "salmon esplinade," let him ask for "chicken marine-go,"
let him ask for plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or throat
lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,' says Billy Ames, who owns
the 'twin star' outfit and is anticipatin' this peer as a guest.

"Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener, sharp as a razor,
waitin' to open up such effete luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill Ames
gets called to California by the sickness of his wife. He feels mean about
abandonin' the peer, but he don't seem to have no choice, his wife bein'
one of them women who shares her bad health pretty impartially round the
family. So Billy he departs. But before he goes he expounds to Joplin Joe,
his foreman, the nature of a peer and how his wants is apt to be a heap
fashionable, and that when he asks for anything to grasp the can-opener
and run to the store-house--Cacta, you put on the coffee!

"That peer arrives in the afternoon, and he never makes a request any more
than a corpse. Beyond a marked disposition to herd by himself and to
maintain the greatest possible distance between his own person and a
six-shooter, he don't vary none from the bulk of tenderfeet. At night,
when all parties retires, and Joplin Joe ponders on them untouched, effete
luxuries in the store-room, and how the can-opener 'ain't once been dimmed
in the cause of hospitality, it frets him considerable, and he feels he
ain't doin' his duty to the absent Billy Ames.

"At sunrise he can stand it no longer. He thunders on the Britisher's door
with the butt of his six-shooter, calling out:

"'Peer, peer, be you awake?'

"The peer allowed he was, though his teeth was rattling like broken
crockery.

"'Peer, would you relish some "salmon esplinade"?'

"The peer allowed he wouldn't.

"'Peer, would you relish some "chicken marine-go"?'

"The peer allowed he shore wouldn't, and the crockery rattled harder than
ever. Joplin Joe then tried him on the hair-oil a