whoop when he sees it's one white man an' that white man me, stacked up against that congregation of greasers! Nex' thing anybody knows … Say, for the love of Mike, Turk, are you jus' goin' to squat there all night waitin' fer me to peel the spuds an' make the hot cakes an' cawffy an' things? Get a fire goin', can't you?"
Turk sighed, bestirred himself and began to gather dry sticks for the evening blaze. Fifteen minutes later through the little staccato noises of a further lot of fuel snapping in his big hands and the booming of the waters of Hell's Goblet, there came the sound of Steele's voice, lifted mightily. Turk paused in his labours and cocked his head to one side, listening. Bill Rice, laying knife blade to side of bacon, stopped and turned a little to hear better.
"Fell in, maybe," suggested Turk. "Can't he swim?"
"Fell in, nothin'," grunted Rice. "He's singin'. Lord, ain't that man got a voice!"
"The voice ain't so bad," remarked Turk. "But the tune is. He goes up when by rights he oughta come down."
Whereupon Turk began whistling softly, melodiously indicating just what notes were demanded by the composer of a very popular selection from Il Trovatore. He could whistle, could Turk Wilson, and beautifully.
"That's the way she goes by rights," he amended the procedure.
"Yes, sir, Bill Steele's got a voice a man might travel a mile to hear … if travellin' was necessary. Which it ain't. Why, Turk, I remember the time me an' Bill
