"You talkee likum Chinee!" retorted Curley. "Why don't you learn how to talk English? It's easy enough. An' what do you want, anyhow, getting so friendly all of a sudden?"

Antonio hesitated again. "What you do een de corral thees mornin'?"

"Oh, I was looking at them yearlings—they was purty bad, but they're gettin' along all right. What do you think about 'em?"

"No; een de beeg corral."

"Oh, you do!" snapped Curley. "Well, I remembered you was riding around this morning before sun-up so I reckoned I'd look in an' see if you rid my cayuse, which you didn't, an' which is good for you. I ain't a whole lot intending to go moping about on no tired-out bronc, an' don't you forget it, neither. An' seeing as how it ain't none of your d—d business what I do or where I go, that's about all for you."

"You no spik true—Pah! eet ees a lie!" cried the Mexican excitedly, advancing a step, and running into the wash water and a fist, both of which met him in the face. Curley, reaching for his holster and finding that he had forgotten to buckle it on, snatched the Remington from Antonio's sheath while the fallen man was half dazed. Pointing it at the Mexican's stomach, he ordered him up and then told him things.

"I reckon you got off easy, Greaser—th' next time you calls me a liar shoot first, or there'll be one less unwashed, shifty-eyed coyote of a Greaser to ride range nights."

Antonio, drenched and seething with fury, his discolored face working with passion and his small, cruel eyes snapping, sprang to the wall and glared at the man who had knocked him down. But for the gun in Curley's hand there would have been the flash of a knife, but the Remington was master of the situation. Knife throwing is a useful art at times, but it has its limitations. Cursing in Spanish, he backed away and slunk into his shack as Doc Riley stuck his head out of the bunk house doorway, hoping to be entertained.

"Worth while hanging 'round, Curley? Any chance of seeing a scrap?" Doc asked, eying the gun in his friend's hand.

"You could 'a seen th' beginning of a scrap a couple of minutes earlier," Curley replied. "I didn't give him a chance to throw. Why, he was out all night on Pete, yore cayuse—rode him hard, too. He said—"

"My Pete! Out all night on Pete!" yelled Doc, taking a quick step towards Antonio's hut, the door of which slammed shut, whereupon Doc shouted out his opinions of "Greasers" in general and of Antonio in particular. "Is that right?" he asked, turning to Curley. "Was he out on Pete?"

"He shore was—used him up, too."

"I'll break every bone in his yaller carcass!" Doc shouted, shaking his fist at the hut. "Every time I see him I want to get my gun going, an' it's getting worse all th' time. Unwashed pup! I'll fill him full of lead pills surer than anything some of these days, you see if I don't!"