regular two-legged human being. A handkerchief round his neck was good
enough for him _always_. If his pants had a rip in 'em anywheres, or
they was buttons off his vest, or his shirt was tore, did it matter?
No, it didn't matter. It didn't matter a-tall. But now he's gotta buy
new pants if his old ones is tore, and a new shirt besides, and he
sews the buttons on his vest, and he's took to wearin' a necktie. A
_necktie_!"

Jimmie, words failing him for the moment, paused and hooked one foot
comfortably behind the other. He leaned hipshot against the doorjamb,
and spat accurately through a knothole in the bunkhouse floor.

"Yop," he went on, ramming his quid into the angle of his jaw, "and
he's always admiring himself in the mirror, Racey is. He pats his hair
down, after partin' it and usin' enough goose-grease on it to keep
forty guns from rusting for ten years, and he shines his boots with
blacking, _my_ stove-blacking, the rustling scoundrel. Scrouge
southwest a li'l more, Racey, and look at yore chin. They's a li'l
speck of dust on it. Oh, me, oh, my! Li'l sweetheart will have to wash
his face again. Who is she?"

Still Racey did not deign to reply. He placed, removed, and replaced a
garnet stickpin in the necktie a dozen times handrunning. Jimmie beat
the long roll with his knuckles on the bottom of the frying-pan, and
winked at the broad back of Racey Dawson.

"I hear they's a new hasher at Bill Lainey's hotel," pursued the
indefatigable Jimmie. "Tim Page told me she only weighed three hundred
pounds without her shoes. It ain't her! Don't tell me it's her! You
ain't, are you, Racey?"