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 "Well, you're the man of the family at present, anyhow. Don't let your tail-hold slip."

"You watch me, Rawlins."

Peck's mess of biscuits did not turn out very blithesomely. One of them would have served very well in place of the pages from the divorce book, Rawlins thought, finding them about as hard as oysters to open, especially with one hand.

"I guess I left out the bakin' powder, Rawlins," Peck explained, "and I guess maybe I forgot the salt."

"You got in the flour and water, anyhow, Peck. They're all right."

"I've et worse," Peck said, with a sort of vindictive exculpation for his culinary crime. "When I first tried my hand at makin' flopjakes on the range they was tougher than any sheep-hide you ever stuck a knife in. I used to read in story books how them hunters and cowboys cooked their bread by windin' a lump of dough on the end of a stick. Did you ever try it, Rawlins?"

"No, Peck."

"It don't work," said Peck solemnly. He looked across the table, flour on one wing of his moustache, a choking stare of seriousness in his big eyes. "It's a fake; it won't work. No man ever lived that could bake a piece of dough fit to eat on the end of a stick over a fire. It gits ashes on it, Rawlins, and mine got full of ants and bugs."

Peck's recollection of his experiments with a wad of dough on the end of a stick seemed to make him sad. He sat looking at his plate as if he saw the past mar-