thousand strong. You-all'll think all hell's busted loose when
that strike is made."

He raised his glass to his lips. "Here's kindness, and hoping
you-all will be in on it."

He drank and stepped down from the chair, falling into another
one of Bettles' bear-hugs.

"If I was you, Daylight, I wouldn't mush to-day," Joe Hines
counselled, coming in from consulting the spirit thermometer
outside the door. "We're in for a good cold snap. It's
sixty-two below now, and still goin' down. Better wait till she
breaks."

Daylight laughed, and the old sour-doughs around him laughed.

"Just like you short-horns," Bettles cried, "afeard of a little
frost. And blamed little you know Daylight, if you think frost
kin stop 'm."

"Freeze his lungs if he travels in it," was the reply.

"Freeze pap and lollypop! Look here, Hines, you only ben in this
here country three years. You ain't seasoned yet. I've seen
Daylight do fifty miles up on the Koyokuk on a day when the
thermometer busted at seventy-two."

Hines shook his head dolefully.