“What the devil’s the matter with that hot water?” Cal Emmett yelled at Happy Jack from the bedside, where he was kneeling sympathetically.

Happy Jack removed his somber gaze from the licking tongue of flame which showed in the stove-front.  “Fire ain’t going good, yet,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone which contrasted sharply with Cal’s excitement.  “Teakettle’s dry, too.  I sent a man to the crick for a bucket uh water; he’ll be back in a minute.”

“Well, move!  If it was you tied in a knot with cramp, yuh wouldn’t take it so serene.”

“Aw, gwan.  I got troubles enough, cooking chuck for this here layout.  I got to have some help—­and lots of it.  Patsy ain’t got enough stuff cooked up to feed a jack-rabbit.  Somebody’s got to mosey in here and peel the spuds.”

“That’s your funeral,” said Cal, unfeelingly.

Chip stuck his head under the lifted tent-flap.  “Say, I can’t find that cussed Three-H bottle,” he complained.  “What went with it, Cal?”

“Ask Slim; he had it last.  Ain’t Shorty here, yet?” Cal turned again to Patsy, whose outcries were not nice to listen to, “Stay with it, old-timer; we’ll have something hot to pour down yuh in a minute.”

Patsy replied, but pain made him incoherent.  Cal caught the word “poison”, and then “corn”; the rest of the sentence was merely a succession of groans.

The face of Cal lengthened perceptibly.  He got up and went out to where the others were wrangling with Slim over the missing bottle of liniment.

“I guess the old boy’s up against it good and plenty,” he announced gravely.  “He says he’s poisoned; he says it was the corn.”

“Well he had it coming to him,” declared Jack Pates.  “He’s stuck that darned canned corn under our noses every meal since round-up started.  He—­”

“Oh, shut up,” snarled Cal.  “I guess it won’t be so funny if he cashes in on the strength of it.  I’ve known two or three fellows that was laid out cold with tin-can poison.  It’s sure fierce.”

The Happy Family shifted uneasily before the impending tragedy, and their faces paled a little; for nearly every man of the range dreads ptomaine poisoning more than the bite of a rattler.  One can kill a rattler, and one is always warned of its presence; but one never can tell what dire suffering may lurk beneath the gay labels of canned goods.  But since one must eat, and since canned vegetables are far and away better than no vegetables at all, the Happy Family ate and took their chance—­only they did not eat canned corn, and they had discussed the matter profanely and often with Patsy.

Patsy was a slave of precedent.  Many seasons had he cooked beneath a round-up tent, and never had he stocked the mess-wagon for a long trip and left canned corn off the list.  It was good to his palate and it was easy to prepare, and no argument could wean him from imperturbably opening can after can, eating plentifully of it himself and throwing the rest to feed the gophers.