Lambert with a pained,
depressed look on his face. "It sounds like something you blow in to
make a noise."

The barber's customer was a taller man standing than he was long lying.
There wasn't much clearance between his head and the ceiling of the
porch. He stood before Taterleg glowing, his hat off, his short-cut hair
glistening with pomatum, showing his teeth like a vicious horse.

"You look like you was cut out with a can-opener," he sneered.

"Maybe I was, and I've got rough edges on me," Taterleg returned,
looking up at him with calculative eye.

"Now, Mr. Jedlick"--a hand on his arm, but confident of the force of it,
like a lady animal trainer in a cage of lions--"you come on over here
and set down and leave that gentleman alone."

"If anybody but you'd 'a' said it, Alta, I'd 'a' told him he was a
liar," Jedlick growled. He moved his foot to go with her, stopped,
snarled at Taterleg again. "I used to roll 'em in flour and swaller 'em
with the feathers on," said he.

"You're a terrible rough feller, ain't you?" Taterleg inquired with
cutting sarcasm.

Alta led Jedlick off to his corner; Taterleg and Lambert entered the
hotel office.

"Gee, but this is a windy night!" said the Duke, holding his hat on with
both hands.

"I'll let some of the wind out of him if he monkeys with me!"

"Looks to me like I know another feller that an operation wouldn't
hurt," the Duke remarked, turning a sly eye on his friend.

The landlord appeared with a lamp to light them to their beds, putting
an end to these exchanges of threat and banter. As he was leaving them
to their double-barreled apartment, Lambert remarked:

"That man Jedlick's an interesting-lookin' feller."

"Ben Jedlick? Yes, Ben's a case; he's quite a case."

"What business does he foller?"

"Ben? Ben's cook on Pat Sullivan's ranch up the river; one of the best
camp cooks in the Bad Lands, and I guess the best known, without any
doubt."

Taterleg sat down on the side of his bed as if he had been punctured,
indeed, lopping forward in mock attitude of utter collapse as the
landlord closed the door.

"Cook! That settles it for me; I've turned the last flapjack I'll ever
turn for any man but myself."

"How will you manage the oyster parlor?"

"Well, I've just about give up that notion, Duke. I've been thinkin'
I'll stick to the range and go in the sheep business."

"I expect it would be a good move, old feller."

"They're goin' into it around here,