Me Smith

torrent in his stone-china cup.
    There was no attempt at conversation, and only the clatter and rattle of knives, forks, and dishes was heard until a laugh from an adjoining room broke the silence—a laugh that was mirthless, shrill, and horrible.
    McArthur sent a startled glance of inquiry about the table. The laugh was repeated, and the sound was even more wild and maniacal. The little man was shocked at the grin which he noted upon each face.
    “She ought to take a feather and ile her voice,” observed a guest known as “Meeteetse Ed.”
    McArthur could not resist saying indignantly:
    “The unfortunate are to be pitied, my dear sir.”
    “This is jest a mild spasm she’s havin’ now. You ought to hear her when she’s warmed up.”
    McArthur was about to administer a sharper rebuke when the door opened and Susie came out.
    “How’s that for a screech?” she demanded triumphantly.
    “You’d sure make a bunch of coyotes take fer home,” Meeteetse Ed replied flatteringly.
    “You have come in my way not once or twice, but thrice; and now you die! Ha! Ha!” Reaching for a spoon, Susie stabbed Meeteetse Ed on the second china button of his flannel shirt.
    “I’d rather die than have you laff in my ear like that,” declared Meeteetse.
    “Next time I’m goin’ to learn a comical piece.”
    “Any of ’em’s comical enough,” replied a husky voice from the far end of the table. “I broke somethin’ inside of me laffin’ at that one about your dyin’ child.”
    “I don’t care,” Susie answered, unabashed by criticism. “Teacher says I’ve got quite a strain of pathos in me.”
    “You ought to do somethin’ for it,” suggested a new voice. “Why don’t you bile up some Oregon grape-root? That’ll take most anything out of your blood.”
    “Or go to Warm Springs and get your head examined.” This voice was Smith’s.
    “Could they help you any?” The girl’s eyes narrowed and there was nothing of the previous good-natured banter in her shrill tones.
    Smith flushed under the shout of mocking laughter which followed. He tried to join in it, but the glitter of his blue eyes betrayed his anger.
    The incident sobered the table-full, and silence fell once more, until McArthur, feeling that an effort toward conversation was a duty he owed his hostess, cleared his throat and inquired pleasantly:
    “Have any fragments ever been found in that red formation which I observed to the left of us, which would indicate that this vicinity was once the home of the mammoth dinosaur?”
    Too late he realized that the question was ill-advised. As might be expected, it was Tubbs who broke the awkward silence.
    “Didn’t look to me, as I rid along, that it ever were the home of anybuddy. A homestid’s no good if you can’t git water on it.”
    McArthur hesitated, then explained: “The dinosaur was a prehistoric reptile,” adding modestly, “I once had the pleasure of helping to restore an armored dinosaur.”
    “If ever I gits a rope on one of them things, I’ll box him up and ship him on to you,” said Tubbs generously. Then he inquired as an afterthought: “Would he snap or chaw me up a-tall?”
    “What’s a prehysteric reptile?” interrupted Susie.
    “This particular reptile was a big snake, with feet, that lived here when this country was a marsh,” McArthur explained simply, for Susie’s benefit.
    The guests exchanged incredulous glances, but it was Meeteetse Ed who laughed explosively and said:
    “Why, Mister, they ain’t been a sixteenth of an inch of standin’ water on this hull reserve in twenty year.”
    “Better haul in your horns, feller, when you’re talkin’ to a real prairie man.” Smith’s contemptuous tone nettled McArthur, but Susie retorted for him.
    “Feller,” mocked Susie, “looks like you’re mixed. You mean when he’s talkin’ to a Yellow-back. No real prairie man packs a chip on his shoulder all the time. That buttermilk you was raised on back there in Missoury has soured you some.”
    Again an angry flush betrayed Smith’s feeling.
    “A Yellow-back,” Susie explained with gusto in response to McArthur’s puzzled look, “is one of these ducks that reads books with buckskin-colored covers, until he gets to thinkin’ that he’s a Bad Man himself. This here country is all tunnelled over with the graves of Yellow-backs what couldn’t make their bluffs stick; fellers that just knew enough to start rows and couldn’t see ’em