Calamity had no other name than Ben, as far as any one on the range had ever been able to learn. His nickname was derived from the most dolorous face between Eldara and Twin Rivers. Two pale-blue eyes, set close together, stared out with an endless and wistful pathos; a long nose dropped below them, and his mouth curled down at the sides. He was hopelessly round-shouldered from much and careless riding, and in attempting to straighten he only succeeded in throwing back his head, so that his lean neck generally was in a V-shape with the Adam's apple as the apex of the wedge.
Shorty Kilrain received his early education at sea and learned there a general handiness which stood him in stead when he came to the mountain-desert. There was nothing which Shorty could not do with his hands, from making a knot to throwing a knife, and he was equally ready to oblige with either accomplishment. Drew proposed that he take charge of the kitchen with Calamity Ben as an assistant. Shorty glowered on the rancher.
"Me!" he said. "Me go into the galley to wait on a blasted tenderfoot?"
"After he leaves you'll have a month off with full pay and some over, Shorty."
Drew considered him thoughtfully, following the precept of Walpole that every man has his price.
The ex-sailor scratched his head and then rolled his eyes up with a dawning smile, as one who sees a vision of ultimate bliss.
"Let one of the other boys catch my hoss out of the corral every morning and saddle him for me for a month."
"It's a bargain. What'll you do with that time?"
"Sit on the fence and roll a cigarette like a blasted gentleman and damn the eyes of the feller that's catchin' my hoss."
"And me," said Calamity Ben, "what do I get?"
"You get orders," answered Kilrain, "from me."
Calamity regarded him, uncertain whether or not to fight out the point, but apparently decided that the effort was not worth while.
"There ain't going to be no luck come out of this," he said darkly. "Before this tenderfoot gets out of the house, we're all going to wish he was in hell."
But with the stage set and the curtain ready to rise on the farce, the audience did not arrive until the shadow of the evening blotted the windows of the office where big Lawlor waited impatiently, rehearsing his part; but when the lamp had been lighted, as though that were a signal for which the tenderfoot had waited, came a knock at the door of the room, and then it was jerked open and the head of one of the cowpunchers was inserted.