“Wal, I reckon you can’t onless you want to hev them scrappin’,” rejoined Stillwell, dryly.  “What you’ve got on your hands now, Miss Majesty, is to let ’em come one by one, an’ make each cowboy think you’re takin’ more especial pleasure in showin’ him than the feller who came before him.  Then mebbe we can go on with cattle-raisin’.”

Madeline protested, and Stillwell held inexorably to what he said was wisdom.  Several times Madeline had gone against his advice, to her utter discomfiture and rout.  She dared not risk it again, and resigned herself gracefully and with subdued merriment to her task.  Jim Bell was ushered into the great, light, spotless kitchen, where presently Madeline appeared to put on an apron and roll up her sleeves.  She explained the use of the several pieces of aluminum that made up the bread-mixer and fastened the bucket to the table-shelf.  Jim’s life might have depended upon this lesson, judging from his absorbed manner and his desire to have things explained over and over, especially the turning of the crank.  When Madeline had to take Jim’s hand three times to show him the simple mechanism and then he did not understand she began to have faint misgivings as to his absolute sincerity.  She guessed that as long as she touched Jim’s hand he never would understand.  Then as she began to measure out flour and milk and lard and salt and yeast she saw with despair that Jim was not looking at the ingredients, was not paying the slightest attention to them.  His eyes were covertly upon her.

“Jim, I am not sure about you,” said Madeline, severely.  “How can you learn to make bread if you do not watch me mix it?”

“I am a-watchin’ you,” replied Jim, innocently.

Finally Madeline sent the cowboy on his way rejoicing with the bread-mixer under his arm.  Next morning, true to Stillwell’s prophecy, Frank Slade, Jim’s bunkmate, presented himself cheerfully to Madeline and unbosomed himself of a long-deferred and persistent desire to relieve his overworked comrade of some of the house-keeping in their bunk.

“Miss Hammond,” said Frank, “Jim’s orful kind wantin’ to do it all hisself.  But he ain’t very bright, an’ I didn’t believe him.  You see, I’m from Missouri, an’ you’ll have to show me.”

For a whole week Madeline held clinics where she expounded the scientific method of modern bread-making.  She got a good deal of enjoyment out of her lectures.  What boys these great hulking fellows were!  She saw through their simple ruses.  Some of them were grave as deacons; others wore expressions important enough to have fitted the faces of statesmen signing government treaties.  These cowboys were children; they needed to be governed; but in order to govern them they had to be humored.  A more light-hearted, fun-loving crowd of boys could not have been found.  And they were grown men.  Stillwell explained that the exuberance of spirits lay in the difference in their fortunes.  Twenty-seven cowboys, in relays of nine, worked eight hours a day.  That had never been heard of before in the West.  Stillwell declared that cowboys from all points of the compass would head their horses toward Her Majesty’s Rancho.