[Illustration:  In front of them stood sitting bull]

“Hey!  Call off yer dog, will ye?” requested one of the men.

“He ain’t mine,” Bill answered calmly, indicating Whitey.  “He’s his.”

“Well, get him to call him off,” said the man.  “Every time we move he makes a noise like sudden death.”

Whitey summoned Bull, who came to him obediently enough, and the men rose to their feet, and stretched themselves and brushed off some of the straw that clung to their not over-neat attire.  They were not as bad-looking as they might have been, neither were they as good-looking.  One was tall and slim and wore a dark beard.  The other was almost as tall, but, being very fat, did not look his height.  He was clean-shaven, or would have been had it not been for about three days’ stubbly growth.  Their clothes were well-worn, and they wore no collars, but their boots were good.

“What you fellers doin’ here?” demanded Bill.  “Ain’t the bunk house good enough for you?”

“We got in late, an’ ev’body was in bed,” said the taller of the two.  “We’re walkin’ through for th’ thrashin’.”

“Well, yer late for that too,” said Bill.

The threshing in the early days of Montana was an affair in which many people of all sorts took part, as will be seen later.  Bill questioned the men, and their story was brought out.  It seemed that they had come from Billings, in search of work at threshing.  The taller, thin one was named Hank, but was usually called “String Beans,” on account of his scissors-like appearance.  He had formerly been a cowpuncher.  The other had been a waiter, until he got too fat, then he had become a cook.  Originally named Albert, after he had waited in a restaurant for a while he had been dubbed “Ham And,” which, you may know, is a short way of ordering ham and eggs.  And this name in time was reduced to “Ham.”

Bill Jordan did not seem to take the men seriously.  Their names may have had something to do with his attitude, and the early West was not over-suspicious, anyway.  It had been said that “out here we take every man to be honest, until he is proven to be a thief, and in the East they take every man to be a thief, until he is proven to be honest.”  You can believe that or not, as you happen to live in the West or in the East.  Besides, Bill could make use of the talents of String Beans and Ham.  He needed “hands” to work on the ranch.

When Whitey found that his supposed tragedy was turning into a comedy, he felt rather bad about it, especially as Bill was inclined to guy him.

“Lucky you didn’t shoot up them two fellers what’s named after food,” Bill said, when the strangers had retired to the bunk house.  “Or knock ‘em out with some of them upper-cuts you’re so handy in passin’ ’round.”  For a boy, Whitey was an expert boxer.

“What was I to think, finding them that way?” Whitey retorted.  “And they don’t look very good to me yet.”