Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/119

 to get into it and out of it, if fortune might show him a knothole in a plank somewhere through which he might escape.

Alvino had spread the simple meal on one end of the long table, covered with oilcloth to which the dishes stuck to the spilling of much grease and semi-liquid foods, and profanity to season it all. The two cowboys sat across the table from the door, Findlay at the end, the mongrel Mexican alone, back to the entrance. Two plates were there beside him for the wranglers, the one farthest from him in the place where Barrett commonly sat. Barrett took his place, no greetings passing between him and any at the board.

Alvino always turned the plates bottom-side up to protect them from flies, that being his one nicety, and it is a poor man who cannot put forth one. As Barrett turned the dish over to receive bacon and beans, one of the cowpunchers across the table—he was a hound-faced fellow, with dark lopping hair about his ears—reached to the floor and picked up something, which he tossed directly into Barrett's plate. It was the towel which the half-breed had found too foul for even his greasy skin.

"There's a napkin for you, bud. They, tell me you fellers from the east just got to have 'em when you eat."

Barrett accepted the jest, quarrel-making as it was meant to be, in good part. He dropped the foul rag to the floor, wiped his plate on the sleeve of his shirt, and grinned.

"I can make out this meal without one, thank you," he said.