"What's matter, Jim?" interrupted Curley, dropping his feet to the floor and groping for his trousers. "You got my pants?" he asked Dan, whereupon Dan told him many things, ending with: "In th' name of heaven what do I want with pants on this leg! I can't get my own on, let alone yourn. Mebby Chick has put 'em on his scratched wing!" he added, with great sarcasm, whereupon Curley found them under his bunk and muttered a profane request to be told why they had crawled so far back.

"Yo're a hard luck bunch if yo're as sore as me," growled Meeker, kicking the offending box out of doors. "I cuss every time I hobble."

"Oh, I ain't sore, not a bit—I'm feeling fine," exulted Curley, putting one foot into a twisted trouser leg while he hopped recklessly about to keep his balance, Dan watching him enviously. He grabbed Chick's shoulder to steady himself and then arose from the floor to find Chick calling him every name in the language and offering to whip him with one hand if he grabbed the wounded arm again.

"Aw, what's th' matter with you!" he demanded, getting the foot through without further trouble. "I didn't stop to think, you chump!"

"Why didn't you?" snapped Chick, aggressively.

"Curley, yo're a plain, d—d nuisance—get outside where you'll have plenty of room to get that other leg in," remarked Dan.

"Not satisfied with keeping us all awake by his cussed snoring an' talking, he goes an' hops right on my bad arm!" Chick remarked. "He snores something awful, Jim; like a wagon rumbling over a wooden bridge; an' he whistles every lap."

"You keep away from me, you cow!" warned Doc, weighing a Colt in his hand by the muzzle. "I'll shore bend this right around yore face if you don't!"

"Aw, go to th' devil! Yo're a bunch of sore-heads, just a bunch of—" Curley snapped, his words becoming inaudible as he went out to the wash bench, where Meeker followed him, glad to get away from the grunting, swearing crowd inside.

"Curley," the foreman began, leaning against the house to ease his thigh and groin, "that Greaser of our'n is either going loco, or he is up to some devilment, an' I a whole lot favors th' devilment. I thought of telling him to clean out, get off th' range an' stay off, but I reckon I'll let him hang around a while longer to see just what his game is. Of course if he is crooked, it's rustling. I'd like an awful lot to ketch him rustling; it'd wipe out a lot of guessing, an' him at th' same time."

"They're all of 'em crooked," Curley replied, refilling the basin. "Every blasted one, an' he's worse than all th' others—he's a coyote!"

"Yes, I reckon you ain't far from right," replied Meeker. "Well, anyway, I put in a bad night an' rolled out earlier'n usual. I looked out an' saw somebody sneaking around th' corral, an', gettin' my gun, I went after him hot foot. It was Antonio, an' when I asks for whys an' wherefores, he gives me a fool yarn about having a dream. He woke up an' was plumb scared to death somebody was running off with th' ranch, an', being so all-fired worried about th' safety of th' ranch he's too lazy to work for, he just couldn't sleep, but had to get up an' saddle his cayuse an' ride around th' corrals to see if it was here. Now, what do you think of that?"