Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/92

 was beside Peck, Rawlins opposite looking into her troubled eyes. Below them there was a barren of white cloth, as if the table had grown since the dishes were placed, stretching out in rebuke of the inhospitality shown the two men at the creekside, calling reproving attention to the fact of there being plenty room for all.

There was ham on a large platter; there was canned corn. There were potatoes, shipped from Colorado, and butter that was made in a Kansas City packing house from the fat of Texas beeves; it was currently known as bull butter in the sheep country, where it was generally favored above the natural product. Perhaps this was on the argument that any kind of butter that involved the life and carcass of the cow in making was the best kind of butter for people who were the uncompromising enemies of cows. There was milk in a tin from New Jersey, there were preserves of chemical composition, palely pink, gelatinously quaking, which came from Chicago. It was a largely artificial meal, but there was plenty of it.

Tippie had removed his leather coat and hung it on a hook that appeared to be reserved for him on the back of the kitchen door, disclosing a neat black jersey, and necktie of hue somewhat shocking in the light of his sour countenance and unfrivolous mien. Opposite him Peck sat with elbows spread wide on the cloth, amazingly arrayed in a Tuxedo coat with satin lapels, a low-cut, brocaded vest, a white shirt with bosom as big as the ham platter, and of similar form. All that could be seen of him above the table was correct to a