nough of that!" warned Flagg, sourly. "Kyle, get up onto
your feet where you belong."

But the spirit of jest made the boss reckless and willfully disobedient.
He insisted doggedly on his role as a balky ox and scowled at the
teamster. "If you want a job you'll have to show _me_!"

The teamster adjured Mr. Kyle in very polite language, and did not bring
the swishing goad within two feet of the scornful nose; the candidate
wanted a job and was not in a mood to antagonize a prospective boss.

"You're a hell of a teamster!" yapped Kyle. "What's your system? Do you
get action by feeding an ox lollypops, kissing him on the nose and
saying, 'Please,' and 'Beg your pardon'?"

The big chap began to show some spirit of his own under the lash of the
laughter that was encouraging Kyle.

"I ain't getting a square deal, mister. That post wa'n't an ox; you
ain't an ox."

"I am, I tell you! Start me."

"You vow and declare that you're an ox, do you, before all in hearing?"

"That's what!" Mr. Kyle was receiving the plaudits and encouragement of
all his friends who enjoyed a joke, and was certain in his mind that he
had that bashful stutterer sized up as a quitter. Flagg folded his arms
and narrowed his eyes--his was the air of one who was allowing fate to
deal with a fool who tempted it.

The candidate did not hurry matters. He spat meditatively into first one
fist and then into the other. He grasped the goad in both hands. He
looked calculatingly at Mr. Kyle, who was on his hands and knees, and
was cocking an arch and provocative look upward, approving the grins of
the men near him.

When the teamster did snap into action his manner indicated that he knew
how to handle balky oxen. First he cracked Mr. Kyle smartly over the
bridge of the nose. "Wo haw up!" was a command which Kyle tried to obey
in a flame of ire, but a swifter and more violent blow across the nose
sent him back on his heels, his eyes shut in his agony.

"Gee up into the yoke, you crumpled-horn hyampus!" The teamster welted
the goad across Kyle's haunches and further encouraged the putative ox
by a thrust of a full inch of the brad.

When the boss came onto his feet with a berserker howl of fury and
started to attack, the ox expert yelled, "Dat rat ye, don't ye try to
hook your horns into me!" Then he flailed the stick once more across
Kyle's nose with a force that knocked the boss flat on his back.

Echford Flagg stepped forward and stood between the tw