Chapter 13 - Page 2

"Is 'forty' good?" queried Willie.

"Good? Why, Salvator never worked no faster. Here he is now--look for yourselves."

Speed appeared, partly clad, and glowing with a rich salmon pink.

"Good-morning," said Fresno politely. "I came in to see how you liked the cold water."

"So that was one of your California jokes, eh? Well, I'll--"

Speed moved ominously in the direction of the tenor, but Willie checked him.

"We put the ice in that bar'l, Mr. Speed."

"You!"

Willie and Stover nodded.

"Then let me tell you I expect to have pneumonia from that bath." The young man coughed hollowly. "That's the way I caught it once before, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if I'd be too sick to run by Saturday."

"Oh no; you don't get pneumony but once."

"And, besides," Fresno added, "it wouldn't have time to show up by Saturday."

"Get that ice-chest out of my room, that's all; it makes the air damp."

"No indeed!" said Still Bill. "We're goin' to see that you use it reg'lar." Then of Glass he inquired: "What do you do to him next?"

"I give him a nerve treatment. A jack-rabbit jumped at him this morning and he bolted to the outside fence." Larry forced his employer to a seat, then, securing a firm hold of the flesh, began to discourse learnedly upon anatomy and hygiene, the while his victim writhed. It was evident that the cattle-men were intensely interested. "Well, sir, when I first got him his sploven was in terrible shape," said Larry. "In fact, I never saw such a--"

"What was in terrible shape?" ventured the tenor. "His sploven."

"Sploven! Is that a locality or a beverage?"

Glass glowered at the cause of the interruption. "It's a nerve- centre, of course!" Then to the others, he ran on, glibly: "The treatment was simple, but it took time. You see, I had to first trace his bedildo to its source, like this." He thrust a finger into Wally's back and ploughed a furrow upward. "You see?" He paused, triumphantly. "A fore-shortened bedildo! It ain't well yet."

"Can a man run fast with one of them?" inquired Willie.

"Certainly, cer-tain-ly--provided, of course, that the percentage of spelldiffer in the blood offsets it."

Both cowboys came closer now, and hung eagerly upon every word.

"And does it do--that?" they questioned, while Fresno suggested that it was not easy to tell without bleeding the patient.

"No, no! You can hear the spelldiffers." Glass motioned to Willie.

"Put your ear to his chest. Hear anything?"