“Clothin’ is only skin deep,” said Bill.

Whitey felt called on to justify his alarm.  “It’s not only their clothes,” he said, “but their looks.  You noticed that Bull didn’t like them, and you know dogs have true instinct about judging people.”

“Let me tell you somethin’ about dogs,” began Bill, who usually was willing to tell Whitey, or anybody else, something about anything.  “Dogs is supposed to be democratic, but they ain’t.  They don’t like shabby men.  I’m purty fond of dogs, but they got one fault—­they’re snobs.  They don’t like shabby men,” Bill repeated for emphasis.

As Whitey thought of this he remembered that the dogs he had known had this failing, if it was a failing.  He also tried to think of some reason for it, so he could prove that Bill was wrong, but he couldn’t.  That is, he couldn’t think of anything until Bill had gone away and it was too late.  Then it occurred to him that it was only the dogs that belonged to the well-dressed that disliked the poorly dressed.  That a shabby man’s dog loved him just as well as though he wore purple and fine linen, whatever that was.  Whitey looked around for Bill to confound him with this truth, but Bill had disappeared—­a way he had of doing the moment he got the better of an argument.

If the two men were aching to work, they had not long to suffer; Bill Jordan soon found occupation for them.  Slim, the negro cook, had been taken with a “misery” in his side, and Ham was installed in his place.  And to do Ham justice he was not such a bad cook.  The ranch hands allowed that he couldn’t have been worse than Slim, anyway.  String Beans did not make so much of a hit as a cowpuncher.  Bill watched some of his efforts, and said that though he was a bad puncher he was a good liar for saying he’d ever seen a cow before.  So String Beans was sent to the mine to work.

This quartz mine, up in the mountains, was the one near which Injun and Whitey had had so many exciting adventures.  Now they owned an interest in it, as has been told, though Mr. Sherwood and a tribe of Dakota Indians were the principal shareholders.  During the summer the mine had been undergoing development, and the first shipment of ore was soon to be made.

With String Beans working at the mine, and Ham improving the men’s digestion as a cook, it began to look as though Whitey’s idea that they were desperate characters was ill-founded.  In fact, the thought had almost passed from his mind, and was quite forgotten on a certain Saturday.  On that day Injun and Whitey were free from the teachings of John Big Moose, and were out on the plains for antelope.  They didn’t get an antelope, didn’t even see one.  All they got were appetites; though Whitey’s appetite came without calling, as it were, and always excited the admiration of Bill Jordan.  After dinner that evening Whitey went to the bunk house.  Some of the cowpunchers were in from the range, and Whitey loved to hear the yarns they would spin.