out for?" he asked himself fretfully. Then aloud: "I'm going to have
a heart-to-heart talk with the cook at the hotel, and if he don't give
us a real old round-up beefsteak, flopped over on the bare stovelids,
there'll be things happen I'd hate to name over. He can sure do the
business, all right; he used to cook for the Double-Crank. And you,"
he turned, elaborately cheerful, to Mr. Dill, "you are my guest."

"Thank you," smiled Mr. Dill, recovering himself and never guessing
how strange was the last sentence to the lips of Charming Billy Boyle.
"I shall be very glad to be the guest of somebody--once more."

"Yuh poor old devil, yuh sure drifted a long ways off your home
range," mused Billy. Out loud he only emphasized the arrangement with:

"Sure thing!"




CHAPTER VI.

"_That's My Dill Pickle!_"


Charming Billy Boyle was, to put it mildly, enjoying his enforced
vacation very much. To tell the plain truth and tell it without the
polish of fiction, he was hilariously moistened as to his gullet and
he was not thinking of quitting yet; he had only just begun.

He was sitting on an end of the bar in the Hardtip Saloon, his hat as