Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/35

 innocuous order would have curdled sour wine in a jug.

"I guess you're in the wrong joint, pardner," he said, turning away in injured dignity.

Bill's hearty companions looked hard at their glasses, fixing them with such intent eyes, indeed, as if they watched for some transformation in their contents which must be seized at the right moment or its good effects lost.

There was a sort of startled look among the cowboys ranged at the bar a little distance along. They turned to each other with incredulous faces, drinks poised, as if they had heard something they must verify by appealing one to the other. But there was a good deal of acting in it; under the play of astonishment there was a repressed uprising of hilarity that waited only a word to touch it off. Bill Dunham, in the simplicity of his green soul, supplied it.

"Make it sassaferiller," he said.