Ma Pettengill

  MA PETTENGILL

  by

  HARRY LEON WILSON

  Author of _Bunker Bean_, _Ruggles of Red Gap_, _Somewhere in Red Gap_,etc.

  1919

  TO WILLIAM EUGENE LEWIS

  CONTENTS

  I. MA PETTENGILL AND THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

  II. A LOVE STORY

  III. RED GAP AND THE BIG-LEAGUE STUFF

  IV. VENDETTA

  V. ONE ARROWHEAD DAY

  VI. THE PORCH WREN

  VII. CHANGE OF VENUS

  VIII. CAN HAPPEN!

  IX. THE TAKER-UP

  X. AS TO HERMAN WAGNER

  XI. CURLS

  I

  MA PETTENGILL AND THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

  From the Arrowhead corrals I strolled up the poplar-bordered lane thatleads past the bunk house to the castle of the ranch's chatelaine. Itwas a still Sunday afternoon--the placid interlude, on a day of rest,between the chores of the morning and those of evening. But the calm wasfor the ear alone. To the eye certain activities, silent but swift, wereunder way. On the shaded side piazza of the ranch house I could discernmy hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill; she sat erect, even in arocking-chair, and knitted. On the kitchen steps, full in the westeringsun, sat the Chinese chef of the Arrowhead, and knitted--a yellow,smoothly running automaton. On a shaded bench by the spring house, aplaid golfing cap pushed back from one-half the amazing area of his barepate, sat the aged chore-boy, Boogles, and knitted. The ranch was on awar basis.

  And more: As I came abreast of the bunk house the Sabbath calm waspunctured by the tart and careless speech of Sandy Sawtelle, a top riderof the Arrowhead, for he, too, was knitting, or had been. On a stooloutside the doorway he held up an unfinished thing before his grievedeyes and devoutly wished it in the place of punishment of the wickeddead. The sincere passion of his tones not only arrested my steps butlured through the open doorway the languorous and yawning Buck Devine,who hung over the worker with disrespectful attention. I joined the pair.To Buck's query, voiced in a key of feigned mirth, Sandy said with simpledignity that it was going to be a darned good sweater for the boys in thetrenches. Mr. Devine offered to bet his head that it wasn't going to beanything at all--at least nothing any one would want round a trench. Mr.Sawtelle ignored the wager and asked me if I knew how to do this here,now, casting off. I did not.

  "I better sneak round and ask the Chink," said Sandy. "He's the starknitter on the place."

  We walked on together, seemingly deaf to certain laboured pleasantries ofMr. Devine concerning a red-headed cow-puncher that had got rejected forfighting because his feet was flat and would now most likely get rejectedfor knitting because his head was flat. By way of covering the heartylaughter of Mr. Devine at his own wit I asked why Sandy should notconsult his employer rather than her cook.

  With his ball of brown wool, his needles and his work carried tenderlybefore him Sandy explained, with some embarrassment as it seemed, thatthe madam was a good knitter, all right, all right, but she was an awfulbitter-spoken lady when any little thing about the place didn't go justright, making a mountain out of a mole hill, and crying over spilt milk,and always coming back to the same old subject, and so forth, till you'dthink she couldn't talk about anything else, and had one foot in thepoorhouse, and couldn't take a joke, and all like that. I could believeit or not, but that was the simple facts of the matter when all was saidand done. And the Chink was only too glad to show off how smart he waswith a pair of needles.

  This not only explained nothing but suggested that there might indeed besomething to explain. And it was Sandy's employer after all who resolvedhis woolen difficulty. She called to him as he would have left me for thepath to the kitchen door:

  "You bring that right here!"

  It was the tone of one born to command, and once was enough. Sandybrought it right there, though going rather too much like a martyr tothe stake, I thought; for surely it was not shameful that he should proveinept in the new craft.

  Nor was there aught but genial kindness in the lady's reception of him.Ma Pettengill, arrayed in Sabbath bravery of apparel, as of a debutanteat a summer hotel where the rates are exorbitant, instantly laid by herown knitting and questioned him soothingly. It seemed to be a simpledifficulty. Sandy had reached the point where a sweater must have a neck,and had forgotten his instructions. Cordially the woman aided him tosubtract fourteen from two hundred and sixty-two and then to ascertainthat one hundred and twenty-four would be precisely half of theremainder. It was all being done, as I have remarked, with the gentlestconsidering kindness, with no hint of that bitterness which the neophytehad shown himself to be fearing in the lady. Was she not kindness itself?Was she not, in truth, just a shade too kind? Surely there was a purrto her voice, odd, unwonted; and surely her pupil already cringed undera lash that impended.

  Yet this visible strain, it seemed, had not to do with knitted garments.Ma Pettengill praised the knitting of Sandy; praised it to me and praisedit to him. Of course her remark that he seemed to be a born knitter andought to devote his whole time to it might have seemed invidious to asensitive cowman, yet it was uttered with flawless geniality. But whenSandy, being set right, would have taken his work and retired, as wasplainly his eager wish, his mentor said she would knit two of the newshort rows herself, just to make sure. And while she knitted these tworows she talked. She knitted them quickly, though the time must haveseemed to Sandy much longer than it was.

  "Here stands the greatest original humorist in Kulanche County," saidthe lady, with no longer a purring note in her voice. She boomed theannouncement. Sandy, drooping above her, painfully wore the affectationof counting each stitch of the flashing needles. "And practical jokes--mysakes alive! He can think of the funniest jokes to put up on poor,unsuspecting people! Yes, sir; got a genius for it. And witty! Ofcourse it ain't just what he says that's so funny--it's the noisy wayhe says it.

  "And you wouldn't think it to look at him, but he's one of these herefinancial magnets, too. Oh, yes, indeed! Send him out with a hatful often-dollar bills any day and he won't let one of 'em go for a cent undersix dollars, not if buyers is plenty--he's just that keen and avaricious.That's his way. Never trained for it, either; just took it up natural."

  With drawn and ashen face Mr. Sawtelle received back his knitting. Hispose was to appear vastly preoccupied and deaf to insult. He was stillcounting stitches as he turned away and clattered down the steps.

  "Say!" called his employer. Sandy turned.

  "Yes, ma'am!"

  "You seen the party that stopped here this morning in that big, pompoustouring car?"

  "No, ma'am!"

  "They was after mules."

  "Yes, ma'am!"

  "They offered me five hundred dollars a span for mine."

  "No, ma'am--I mean, yes, ma'am!"

  "That's all. I thought you'd rejoice to know it." The lady turned to meas if Mr. Sawtelle had left us. "Yes, sir; he'd make you die laughingwith some of his pranks, that madcap would. I tell you, when he beginscutting up--"

  But Mr. Sawtelle was leaving us rapidly. His figure seemed to be drawnin, as if he would appear smaller to us. Ma Pettengill seized her ownknitting once more, stared grimly at it, then stared grimly down at thebunk house, within which her victim had vanished. A moment later she waspouring tobacco from a cloth sack into a brown cigarette paper. She drewthe string of the sack--one end between her teeth--rolled the cigarettewith one swift motion and, as she waited the blaze of her match, remarkedthat they had found a substitute for everything but the mule. Thecigarette lighted, she burned at least a third of its length in one vastinhalation, which presently caused twin jets of smoke to issue from therather widely separated corners of a generous mouth. Upo
n which sheremarked that old Safety First Timmins was a game winner, about thegamest winner she'd ever lost to.

  Three other mighty inhalations and the cigarette was done. Again she tookup the knitting, pausing for but one brief speech before the needlesbegan their shrewd play. This concerned the whale. She said the whalewas the noblest beast left to us in all the animal kingdom and wouldvanish like the buffalo if treated as food. She said it was shameful toreduce this majestic creature of the deep to the dimensions of a chafingdish and a three-cornered slice of toast. Then she knitted.

  She had left numerous openings; some humorous emprise of Sandy Sawtelle,presumably distressing; the gameness of one Timmins as a winner; thewhale as a food animal; the spectacular price of mules broken to harness.Rather than choose blindly among them I spoke of my day's fishing.Departing at sunrise I had come in with a bounteous burden of rainbowtrout, which I now said would prove no mean substitute for meat at theevening meal.

  Then, as she grimly knitted, Ma Pettengill discoursed of other boastedsubstitutes for meat, none of which pleased her. Hogs and sheep wereother substitutes, there being but one genuine meat, to wit, Beef. Takehogs; mean, unsociable animals, each hog going off by himself, cursingand swearing every step of the way. Had I ever seen a hog that thoughtany other hog was good enough to associate with him? No, I hadn't; nornobody else. A good thing hogs couldn't know their present price. Stuckup enough already! And sheep? Silly. No minds of their own. Let one dieand all the rest think they got to die also. Do it too. No brain. Ofcourse the price tempted a lot of moral defectives to raise 'em, but whenyou reflected that you had to go afoot, with a dog that was smarter thanany man at it, and a flea-bitten burro for your mess wagon---not for her.Give her a business where you could set on a horse. Yes, sir; peoplewould get back to Nature and raise beef after the world had been madesafe once more for a healthy appetite. This here craze for substituteswould die out. You couldn't tell her there was any great future for thecanned jack-rabbit business, for instance--just a fad; and whales thesame. She knew and I knew that a whale was too big to eat. Peoplecouldn't get any real feeling for it, and not a chance on earth to breed'em up and improve the flesh. Wasn't that the truth? And these here dietexperts, with their everlasting talk about carbos and hydrates, were theydoing a thing but simply taking all the romance out of food? No, theywere not. Of course honest fish, like trout, were all right if a bodywas sick or not hungry or something.

  Trout reminded her of something, and here again the baleful tooth ofcalumny fleshed itself in the fair repute of one Timmins. She describedhim as "a strange growth named Timmins, that has the Lazy 8 Ranch overon the next creek and wears kind of aimless whiskers all over his facetill you'd think he had a gas mask on." She talked freely of him.

  "You know what he does when he wants a mess of trout? Takes one ofthese old-fashioned beer bottles with patent stoppers, fills it up withunslaked lime, pours in a little water, stops it up, drops it in a likelylooking trout pool, and in one minute it explodes as good as somethingmade by a Russian patriot; all the trout in the pool are knocked outand float on the surface, where this old highbinder gathers 'em in. He'sa regular efficiency expert in sport. Take fall and spring, when the wildgeese come through, he'll soak grain in alcohol and put it out for 'emover on the big marsh. First thing you know he'll have a drunken oldgoose by the legs, all maudlin and helpless. Puts him in a coop tillhe sobers up, then butchers him.

  "Such is Safety First: never been known to take a chance yet. Why, say,a year ago when he sold off his wool there was a piece in the countypaper about him getting eighteen thousand dollars for it; so naturallythere was a man that said he was a well-known capitalist come up fromSan Francisco to sell him some stock in a rubber company. Safety admitshe has the money and he goes down to the big city for a week at thecapitalist's expense, seeing the town's night life and the blue-printmaps and the engraved stock and samples of the rubber and thecapitalist's picture under a magnificent rubber tree in South America,and he's lodged in a silk boudoir at the best hotel and wined anddined very deleteriously and everything is agreed to. And the nightbefore he's going to put his eighteen thousand into this lovely rubberstock that will net him two hundred per cent, at the very lowest, on thecapitalist's word of honour, what does he do but sneak out and take thetrain for home on his return ticket that he'd made the capitalist buyhim.

  "Ever talk to one of these rich capitalists that has rubber stock forsale in South America or a self-starting banana orchard? You know howgood they are.

  "You're certainly entitled to anything of your own that you've keptafter they get through with you. And would you think that this poor,simple-minded old rancher would be any match for their wiles? But ifyou knew he had been a match and had nicked 'em for at least threehundred dollars, would you still think something malignant might beput over on him by a mere scrub buckeroo named Sandy Sawtelle, thatnever made a cent in his life except by the most degrading manuallabour? No, you wouldn't. No fair-minded judge of criminals would.

  "But I admit I had a weak moment. Yes, sir; for a brief spell I was alltoo human. Or I guess what it was. I was all blinded up with immoraldesigns, this here snake-blooded Timmins having put things over on mein stock deals from time to time till I'd got to lying awake nightsthinking how I could make a believer of him. I wanted him to know thereis a God, even if it hadn't ever seemed so to him.

  "Of course I knew it would have to be some high-grade felony, he beingproof against common depredations. Well, then, along come this Sundaypaper, with two whole pages telling about how the meat of the commonwhale will win the war, with a picture of a whale having dotted linesshowing how to butcher it, and recipes for whale patties, and so forth.And next comes the circus to Red Gap, with old Pete, the Indian, goingdown to it and getting crazy about elephants. And so that was how ithappened."

  The lady now knitted in silence, appearing to believe that all had beentold.

  I waited a decent interval, then said I was glad indeed to know how ithad all happened; that it was a great help to know how it had happened,even if I must remain forever ignorant of what it was that had happened.Of course I couldn't expect to be told that.

  It merely brought more about mules. Five hundred dollars a span for muleslooked good until you remembered that you needed 'em worse than the otherparty did. She had to keep her twenty span of old reliables because, whatwith the sailors and section hands you got nowadays to do your haying,you had to have tame mules. Give 'em any other kind and they'd desert theship the minute a team started to run. It cost too much for wagonrepairs.

  Silence again.

  I now said I had, it was true, heard much low neighbourhood scandal aboutthe Timmins man, but that I had learned not to believe all I heard aboutpeople; there was too much prejudice in the world, and at least two sidesto every question.

  This merely evoked the item that Timmins had bought him a thrift stampon the sole ground that it had such a pretty name; then came the wishthat she might have seen him dining in public at that rich hotel wherethe capitalist paid the bills.

  She thought people must have been startled by some of his actions.

  "Yes, sir; that old outlaw will eat soup or any soft food with almost nostrategy at all."

  As we seemed to be getting nowhere I meanly rolled the lady a cigarette.She hates to stop knitting to roll one, but she will stop to light it.

  She stopped now, and as I held the match for her I said quite franklythat it had become necessary for me to be told the whole thing from startto finish. She said she had told me everything--and believed it--butwould go over it again if I didn't understand. Though not always startingat command, the lady has really a full habit of speech.

  I told you about whales, didn't I? Whales started it--whales for tableuse. It come in the Sunday paper--with the picture of a handsome whaleand the picture of a French cook kissing his fingers over the way he hascooked some of it; and the picture of a pleased young couple eating whalein a swell restaurant; and the picture of a f
air young bride in herkitchenette cutting up three cents' worth of whale meat into a chafingdish and saying how glad she was to have something tasty and cheap fordearie's lunch; and the picture of a poor labouring man being told bysomeone down in Washington, D.C., that's making a dollar a year, thata nickel's worth of prime whale meat has more actual nourishment than adollar's worth of porterhouse steak; and so on, till you'd think theworld's food troubles was going to be settled in jig time; all peoplehad to do was to go out and get a good eating whale and salt down theside meat and smoke the shoulders and grind up some sausage and be fixedfor the winter, with plenty to send a mess round to the neighbours nowand then.

  And knocking beef, you understand, till you'd think no one but criminalsand idiots would ever touch a real steak again, on account of its beingso poor in food values, like this Washington scientist says that gets adollar a year salary and earns every cent of it. It made me mad, theslanderous things they said about beef; but I read the piece over prettycarefully and I really couldn't see where the whale was going to put meout of business, at least for a couple years yet. It looked like I'd havetime, anyway, to make a clean-up before you'd be able to go into anybutcher shop and get a rib roast of young whale for six cents, with abushel or two of scraps thrown in for the dog.

  Then this Sunday paper goes out to the bunk house and the boys find thewhale piece and get excited about it. Looks like if it's true that mostof 'em will be driving ice wagons or something for a living. They wantme to send down for a mess of whale meat so they can see if it tasteslike regular food. They don't hardly believe these pictures where peopledressed up like they had money are going into spasms of delight about it.Still, they don't know--poor credulous dubs! They think things you see ina Sunday paper might be true now and then, even if it is most always apack of lies thought up by dissipated newspaper men.

  I tell 'em they can send for a whole whale if they want to pay for it,but none of my money goes that way so long as stall-fed beef retains itspresent flavour; and furthermore I expect to be doing business right herefor years after the whale fad has died out--doing the best I can withabout ten silly cowhands taking the rest cure at my expense the minute Istep off the place. I said there was no doubt they should all be added tothe ranks of the unemployed that very minute--but due to other well-knowncauses than the wiping out of the cattle industry by cold whale hash injelly, which happened to be the dish this French chef was going crazyover.

  They chewed over that pointed information for a while, then they got tomaking each other bets of a thousand dollars about what whale meat wouldtaste like; whether whale liver and bacon could be told from naturalliver and bacon, and whether whale steak would probably taste likecatfish or mebbe more like mud turtle. Sandy Sawtelle, who always knowseverything by divine right, like you might say, he says in superior tonesthat it won't taste like either one but has a flavour all its own, whicheven he can't describe, though it will be something like the meat of thewild sea cow, which roams the ocean in vast herds off the coast ofFlorida.

  Then they consider the question of a whale round-up in an expert manner.It don't look none too good, going out on rodeo in water about threemiles too deep for wading, though the idea of lass'ing a whale calf andbranding it does hold a certain fascination. Sandy says it would be theonly livestock business on earth where you don't always have to befearing a dry season; and Buck Devine says that's so, and likewisethe range is practically unlimited, as any one can see from a good map,and wouldn't it be fine riding herd in a steam yacht with a high-classbartender handy, instead of on a so-and-so cayuse that was liable anyminute to trade ends and pour you out of the saddle on to your lameshoulder.

  They'd got to kidding about it by this time, when who should ride up butold Safety First Timmins. They spring the food whale on Safety with muchflourish. They show him the pictures and quote prices on the hoof--whichare low, but look what even a runt of a yearling whale that was calvedlate in the fall would weigh on the scales!--and no worry about fences orfree range or winter feeding or water holes; nothing to do but ride roundon your private steamboat with a good orchestra, and a chance to bedissolute and count your money. And look what a snap the pioneers willhave with all the mavericks; probably not a single whale in the ocean yetbranded! And does Timmins want to throw in with us? If he does mebbe theycan fix up a deal with me because I want a good business man at the headof the new outfit.

  But Safety says right off quick that it's all a pack of nonsense. He saysit's the mad dream of a visionary or feeble-minded person. He don't denythere would be money in whales if they could be handled, but you couldn'thandle anything that had the whole ocean to swim in that covers threequarters of the earth's surface, as he has often read. And how would youget a branding iron on a whale, and what good would it do you? He'd beatit out for Europe. He said they was foolish to think whales would stay ina herd, and he guessed I'd been talking just to hear myself talk, or morelikely I'd been kidding 'em to get a good laugh.

  Sandy says: "Well, I wasn't going to tell you at first, but I guess it'llbe safe with you, you being a good friend of the Arrowhead, only don'tlet it go no farther; but the fact is the boss is negotiating for thewhale privilege in Great Salt Lake. Yes, sir, she's bribing the Utahlegislature this very minute to let the bill go through! And I guess thatdon't look much like kidding. As soon as the governor has signed the billshe'll put in a couple of good three-year-old bull whales and a nicelittle herd of heifers and have the world's meat supply at her fingerends in less than five years--just killing off the yearling steers."

  Safety looks a bit startled at this, and Sandy goes on to say that thoughwhale meat is now but a fad of the idle rich it's bound to be the meat ofrich and poor alike in future. He'd bet a thousand dollars to a dime thatby the time the next war come along the first thing they'd do would be toestablish a whaleless day. He said whale meat was just that good.

  Safety chewed his gum quite a time on this--he says if a man chews gum hewon't ruin himself in pocket for tobacco--and he read the whale articleover carefully and looked at the pictures again, but he still said itdidn't sound to him like a legitimate business enterprise. He said forone thing there'd be trouble shipping the original herd up to Salt Lake.Sandy said it was true; there would be the initial expense of loading onto flat cars, and a couple of tunnels would have to be widened so thebulls wouldn't be rasped going through, but that I have already takenthis up with the railroad company.

  Safety says that may all be true, but, mark his words, the minute my herdgets into inland waters it will develop some kind of disease like anthraxor blackleg, and the whole bunch will die on me. Sandy says it will be asimple matter to vaccinate, because the animals will be as affectionateas kittens by that time through having been kindly handled, which is alla whale needs. He says they really got a very social nature and are loyalunto death. Once a whale is your friend, he says, it's for life, rain orshine, just so long as you treat him square. Even do a whale a favourjust once and he'll remember your face, make no difference if it's fiftyyears; though being the same, it is true, in his hatreds, because a whalenever forgives an injury. A sailor he happens to know once give a whalehe had made friends with a chew of tobacco just for a joke and the animalgot into an awful rage and tried to tear the ship down to get at him, andthen he followed the ship all over the world waiting for this sailor tofall off or get wrecked or something, till finally the hunted man got sonervous he quit the sea and is now running a news stand in Seattle, ifSafety don't believe it. It just goes to show that a whale as long asyou're square with him is superior in mind and morals to a steer, whichain't got sense enough to know friend from foe.

  Safety still shakes his head. He says "safe and sane" has been his mottothroughout a long and busy life and this here proposition don't soundlike neither one to him. The boys tell him he's missing a good thing bynot throwing in with us. They say I'm giving 'em each a big block ofstock, paid up and non-assessable, and they don't want him to come roundlater when they're rolling in wealth a
nd ask why they didn't give him achance too.

  "I can just hear you talk," said Sandy. "You'll be saying: 'I knew thatwhole fool bunch when not one ever had a dollar he could call his own theday after he was paid off, and now look at 'em--throwing their hundredsof thousands right and left; houses with pianos in every room; new bootsevery week; silver-mounted saddles at a thousand each; choice wines,liquors, and cigars; private taxicabs; and Alexander J. Sawtelle, thewealthy banker, being elected to Congress by an overwhelming majority!'That's the way you'll be talking," said Sandy, "with regret eating intoyour vitals like some horrible acid that is fatal to man and beast."

  Safety says he thinks they're all plumb crazy, and a fool and his moneyis soon parted--this being a saying he must have learned at the age ofthree and has never forgotten a word of--and he comes up to the house tosee me. Mebbe he wanted to find out if I had really lost my mind, but hesaid nothing about whales. Just set round and talked the usual hard luck.Been in the stock business thirty years and never had a good year yet.Nothing left of his cattle but the running gear; and his land so poor youcouldn't even raise a row on it unless you went there mad; and why hekeeps on struggling in the bitter clutch of misfortune he don't know. ButI always know why he keeps on struggling. Money! Nothing but money. Sowhen he got through mourning over his ruined fortunes, and feebly saidsomething about taking some mules off my hands at a fair price, I shuthim off firmly. Whenever that old crook talks about taking anything offyour hands he's plotting as near highway robbery as they'll let him stayout of jail for. He was sad when I refused two hundred and fifty dollarsa span for my best mules.

  He went off shaking his head like he hadn't expected such inhumanity froman old friend and neighbour to one who through hard luck was now down andout.

  Well, I hear no more about whales; but a circus is coming to Red Gap andold Pete, the Indian, says he must go down to it, his mind being inflamedby some incredible posters pasted over the blacksmith shop at Kulanche.He says he's a very old man and can't be with us long, and when he doestake the one-way trail he wants to be able to tell his friends on theother side all about the strange animals that they never had a chance tosee. The old pagan was so excited about it I let him go. And he was stillmore excited when he got back two days later. Yes, sir; he'd found a wayto fortune.

  He said I'd sure think he was a liar with a crooked tongue and a falseheart, but they had an animal at that circus as big as our biggestcovered mess wagon and it would weigh as much as the six biggest steers Iever shipped. It has a nose about five feet long--he was sure I wouldn'tbelieve this part--that it fed itself with, and it carried so much meatthat just one ham would keep a family like Pete's going all winter. Hesaid of course I would think he was a liar, but I could write down to RedGap to a lawyer, and the lawyer would get plenty of people to swear to itright in the courthouse. And so now I must hurry up and stock the placewith these animals and have more meat than anybody in the world and getrich pretty quick. Forty times he stretched his arms to show me how bigone of these hams would be, and he said the best part was that thisanimal hardly ate anything at all but a little popcorn and a few peanuts.Hadn't he watched it for hours? And if I didn't hurry others would getthe idea and run prices up.

  I guess Pete's commercial mind must of been engaged by hearing the boystalk about whales. He hadn't held with the whale proposition, not for aminute, after he learned they live in the ocean. He once had a good lookat the ocean and he promptly said "Too much water!" But here was a landanimal packing nearly as much meat as a whale, eating almost nothing, andas tame as a puppy. "I think, 'Injun how you smart!'" he says when he gotthrough telling me all this in a very secret and important way.

  I told him he was very smart indeed and ought to have a job with theGovernment at a dollar a year telling people to quit beef meat for theelephant. I said I was much obliged for the tip and if I ever got togoing good in elephants I'd see he had a critter of his own to butcherevery fall. So Pete went out with all his excitement and told the boyshow I was going to stock the ranch with these new animals which wasbetter than whales because you wouldn't have to get your feet wet. Theboys made much of it right off.

  In no time at all they had all the white-faces sold off and vast herds ofpure-bred elephants roaming over the ranch with the Arrowhead brand on'em. Down on the flat lands they had waving fields of popcorn and upabove here they had a thousand acres of ripening peanuts; and SandySawtelle, the king of the humourists, he hit on another idea that wouldbring in fifty thousand dollars a year just on the side. He said if acrowd come along to a ranch and bought the rancher's own hay for the sakeof feeding it to his own steers they would be thought weak-minded. Not sowith elephants. He said people would come from far and near and bringtheir little ones to buy our own peanuts and popcorn to feed our ownelephants. All we needed to do was put the stuff up in sacks at a nickela throw. He said of course the novelty might die out in time, but if hecould only get the peanut-and-popcorn concession for the first threeyears that would be all he'd want for his simple needs of living in aswell marble house in Spokane, with a private saloon and hired help tobring him his breakfast in bed and put on another record and ministerto his lightest whim. Buck Devine said he'd be able to throw his own goodmoney right and left if he could get the ivory privilege, which is madefrom the horns of the elephant and is used for many useful purposes; andone of the other boys says they'll develop a good milk strain and get adairy herd, because the milk of this noble animal ought to be fine forprize fighters and piano movers.

  In about ten minutes they was doing quite a business for old Pete'sbenefit, and Pete very earnest about it. He says I've promised him ayoung animal to butcher every fall, and they tell him there ain't no meatso good as a prime young popcorn-fed elephant, and he'll certainly livehigh. And just then up rides old Safety First again. So they get silentand mysterious all at once and warn Pete, so Safety will hear it, not tosay a word to any one. Pete looks secretive and hostile at the visitorand goes back to his woodpile. Safety naturally says what fool thing havethey got into their heads now, and he supposes it's some more of thatwhale nonsense.

  The boys clam up. They say this is nothing like whales, but a dry-landproposition too important to talk about; that I've sworn everyone tosecrecy, but he'll see soon enough what it is when the big money beginsto roll in. They don't mind telling him it's an African proposition ofnew and nourishing food, a regular godsend to the human race, but theygot to keep quiet until I get my options bought up so I'll have thecream of the business.

  Safety sniffs in a baffled manner and tries to worm out a hint, but theysay it's a thing would go like wildfire once it got known, being so muchtastier than whale meat and easier to handle, and eating almost nothing.

  "Whales was pretty good," says Sandy; "but since the boss got a line onthis other animal she's disposed of her whale interests for seventy-threethousand dollars."

  Buck Devine says I showed him the check, that come in yesterday's mail,and let him hold it a minute so he could say he once held seventy-threethousand dollars in his hand just like that. And the money was to be putinto this new business, with the boys being let in on the ground floor,like they had been with the whales. Sandy says that in probably a yearfrom now, or eighteen months at the most, he won't be a thing but adissipated millionaire. Nothing but that!

  Safety is peculiar in his mind. If you told him you found a million golddollars up in the top of that jack pine he wouldn't believe it, yet stilland all he'd get a real thrill out of it. He certainly does cherishmoney. The very notion of it is romantic to him. And he must of beenthrilled now. He hung round, listening keenly while the boys squanderedtheir vast wealth in various reprehensible ways, trying to get some ideaabout the new animal. Finally he sniffed some more, and they was allcrazy as loons, and went off. But where does he go but over to old Peteat the woodpile and keeps him from his work for ten minutes trying to getthe new animal's name out of Pete. But he can't trap the redman into anyadmissions. All he can find out is that Pete
is serious and excited.

  Then he come up to ask me once more if he couldn't take some mules offmy hands. He found out quick and short that he couldn't. Still he hunground, talking nonsense as far as I could make out, because I hadn'tyet been let in on the new elephant proposition. He says he hears I'mtaking up a new line of stock, the same not being whales nor anythingthat swims, and if it's more than I can swing by myself, why, he's a goodneighbour of long standing, and able in a pinch, mebbe, to scrape up afew thousand dollars, or even more if it's a sure cinch, and how aboutit, and from one old friend to another just what is this new line?

  Being busy I acted short. I said I was sticking to cattle in spite of theinfamous gossip against 'em, and all reports to the contrary was meresociety chatter. Still he acted like I was trying to fool him. He wentout saying if I changed my mind any time I was to let him know, and he'dbe over again soon to talk mules at least, if nothing else, and anythinghe could do for me any time, just say the word, and try some of this gum,and so forth. I was right puzzled by these here refined civilities of hisuntil Pete comes in and tells me how the boys have stocked the old ranchwith elephants and how Safety has tried to get him to tell the secret. Itell Pete he's done right to keep still, and then I go down to the bunkhouse and hear the whole thing.

  By this time they're shipping thousands of steer elephants at top prices;they catch 'em up off soft feed and fatten 'em on popcorn and peanuts,and every Thanksgiving they send a nice fat calf down to the White House,for no one looks at turkey any more. Sandy is now telling what a snap itwill be to ride herd on elephants.

  "You pick out a big one," he says, "and you build a little cupalo up ontop of him and climb up into it by means of a ladder, and set there inthis little furnished room with a good book, and smoke and pass the timeaway while your good old saddle elephant does the work. All you got to dois lean out of the front window now and then and jab him in the foreheadwith an ice pick, whichever way you want him to turn."

  I said trust a cow-puncher to think up some way where he'd have to do aslittle work with his hands as he does with his head. But I admitted theyseemed to have landed on old Timmins for once, because he had tried toget Pete to betray the secret and then come wheedling round to me aboutit. I said I could talk more intelligently next time, and he would surecome again because he had lavished two sticks of gum on me, which was anincredible performance and could not have been done except for an evilpurpose.

  "Now say," says Sandy, "that does look like we got him believing. I wasgoing to kid him along about once more, then spring elephants on him, andwe'd all have a good laugh at the old wolf. But it looks to me like achance for better than a laugh; it looks to me like we might commit areal crime against him."

  "He never carries anything on him," I says, "if you're meaning somethingplain, like highway robbery."

  Sandy says he don't mean that; he means real Wall Street stuff, such asone gentleman can pull on another and still keep loose; crooked, he says,but not rough. I ask what is the idea, and Sandy says get him more andmore feverish about the vast returns from this secret enterprise. Thenwe'll cut out a bunch of culls--thin stuff and runts and cripples--andmake him give about four times what they're worth on a promise to let himinto the new deal; tell him we must be rid of this stuff to make room forthe new animals, and naturally we'll favour our friends.

  "There, now!" says Sandy. "I should be in Wall Street this minute, beingable to think up a coop as pernicious as that: and I would of been there,too, only I hate city life."

  "For once in the world's history," I says, "there may be a grain ofsense in your words. Only no cows in the deal. Even to defraud the oldcrook I wouldn't let him have hide nor hair of a beef, not since heworked on my feelings in the matter of them bull calves two years ago.Mules, yes. But the cow is too worthy a beast to be mixed up in anythingsinful I put over on that profiteer. Now I'll tell you what," I says,very businesslike: "you boys tole him along till he gets hectic enough totake that bunch of mule runts down in the south field, and anything youget over fifty dollars a head I'll split with you."

  Sandy hollers at this. He says this bunch ain't mules but rabbits, andthat I wouldn't refuse forty a head for 'em this minute. He says even aman expecting to be let in on a sure-thing elephant ranch would knowsomething wicked was meant if asked to give even as much as fifty dollarsfor these insects. I tell him all very true; but this is just the marginfor his lasting financial genius which he displays so little reticenceabout that it'll get into the papers and make him a marked man from coastto coast if he ain't careful. He says oh, all right, if I want to take itthat way, and he'll see what he can do. Mebbe he can get fifty-five ahead, which would not only give the boys a good laugh but provide alittle torch money.

  I left 'em plotting against a man that had never been touched by any plotwhatever. I resolved to remain kind of aloof from their nefarious doings.It didn't seem quite dignified for one of my standing to be mixed up in adeal so crooked--at least no more than necessary to get my share of thepickings.

  Sure enough, the very next day here come the depraved old outcastmarauding round again at lunch time and et with the boys in the kitchen.He found 'em full of suppressed excitement and secret speech andcareless talk about large sums of money. It must of been like sweetestmusic to his ears. One says how much would it be safe to count on cuttingup the first year--how much in round numbers; and another would say thatin round numbers, what with the expense of getting started and figuringeverything down to the last cent, it wouldn't be safe to count on morethan a hundred thousand dollars; but, of course, for the second year,now, why it would be nearer two hundred thousand in round numbers, evenfiguring everything fine and making big allowance for shrinkage. Afterthat they handed money back and forth in round numbers till they gotsick of the sound of it.

  They said Safety set and listened in a trance, only waking up now andthen to see if he couldn't goad someone into revealing the name of thisnew animal. But they always foiled him. Sandy Sawtelle drew an affectingpicture of himself being cut off by high living at the age of ninety,leaving six or eight million dollars in round numbers and having his kinfolks squabble over his will till the lawyers got most of it. They saidSafety hardly et a morsel and had an evil glitter in his eyes.

  And after lunch he went out to the woodpile where old Pete was workingand offered him two bits in money to tell him the secret, and when oldPete scorned him he raised it to four bits. I guess the idea of any onerefusing money merely for a little talk had never seemed possible to him.He must of thought there was sure something in it. I was away that day,but when I got back and heard about his hellish attempt to bribe oldPete I told the boys they sure had the chance of a lifetime. I said ifthere was a mite of financial prowess in the bunch they would start theprice on them runt mules at one hundred dollars flat, because it wascertain that Safety had struck the skids.

  Next day it looked better than ever. Safety not only appeared in theafternoon but he brought me a quart jar of honey from his own bees. Anyone not having looked up his criminal record would little understandwhat this meant. I pretended to be too busy to be startled at the gift,which broke thirty years of complete inactivity in that line. I lookedworried and important with a litter of papers on my desk and seemed tohave no time to waste on callers. He mentioned mules once or twice withno effect whatever, then says he hears I'm going into a new line thatseems like it might have a few dollars in it, and he hopes I won't losemy all, because so many things nowadays look good till they're tried.I was crafty. I said I might be going into a new line, then again itmight be nothing but idle talk and he better not believe everything hehears.

  He took up the jar of honey and fondled it, with his face looking likehe was laying a loved one to rest, and said he wouldn't mind going intosomething new himself if he could be sure it was sound, because the stockbusiness at present was a dog's life. He said the war was to be won byfood, and every patriot should either go across or come across, and hewas trying to stand by the flag and save
all the food he could, but bythe way his help acted at mealtime you'd think they was a gang of Germanspies. Watch 'em eat beans, he said, and you'd think they'd never heardthat beans had gone from three cents a pound to sixteen; but they hadheard it, because he'd told 'em so in plain English more than once. Butit had no effect. The way they dished into 'em you'd think we'd beenendowed with beans the same as with God's own sunlight.

  He said it was discouraging to a staunch patriot. Here was the Presidenttrying to make democracy safe for the world, and he was now going tostand by the Administration even if he had voted the Republican ticketup to now; but three of his men had quit only yesterday and the war wascertainly lost if the labouring classes kept on making gods of theirstomachs that way. And as a matter of fact now, as between old friendsand neighbours, if I had something that looked good, why not keep it alltogether just with us here in the valley, he, though a poor man, beingable to scrape up a few thousand dollars in round numbers for anyenterprise that was a cinch.

  And the old hound being worth a good half million dollars at thatinstant! But I kept control of my face and looked still more worriedand important and said I might have to take in a good man, and thenagain I might not. I couldn't tell till I got some odd lots of stockcleaned up. Then I looked at some more documents and, like I was talkingunconsciously to myself, I muttered, though distinctly: "Now that therebunch of runt mules--they'll have to go; but, of course, not for any meresong."

  Then I studied some more documents in a masterful manner and forgot mycaller entirely till at last he pussyfooted out, having caught sight ofSandy down by the corral.

  Pretty soon Sandy reports to me. He says Safety is hurt at my cold mannerto an old friend and neighbour that's always running in with a jar ofhoney or some knickknack; and he had mentioned the runt mules, sayinghe might be induced to consider 'em though I probably won't let 'em gofor any mere song, contemptible as they are. Sandy says he's right; thatit's got to be a whole opera with words and music for them mules. He saysI got a reason for acting firm about the price, the reason being thatthis new line I'm going to embark in is such a sure thing that I wantonly friends to come in, and I got to be convinced first that their heartis in the right place.

  Safety says his heart is always getting the best of his head in stockdeals, but just how foolish will I expect an old and tried friend to seemabout these scrub mules that nobody in his right mind would touch at anyprice.

  Sandy yawns like he was weary of it all and says a hundred dollars flat.He said Safety just stood still and looked at him forever without battingan eye, till he got rattled and said that mebbe ninety-five might beconsidered. That's a trick with this old robber when a party's gotsomething to sell him. They tell their price and he just keeps still andlooks at 'em--not indignant nor astonished, not even interested, butmerely fishlike. Most people can't stand it long, it's that uncanny.They get fussed and nervous, and weaken before he's said a single word.

  But it was certain now that the mystery was getting to Safety, becauseotherwise he'd have laughed his head off at the mention of a hundreddollars for these mules. Three months before he'd heard me himself offer'em for forty a head. You see, when I bought bands of mules from time totime I'd made the sellers throw in the little ones to go free with thetrade. I now had twenty-five or so, but it had begun to get to me thatmebbe those sellers hadn't been so easy as I thought at the time. Theywas knotty-headed little runts that I'd never bothered to handle.

  Last spring I had the boys chink up the cracks in the corral and put eachone of the cunning little mites into the chute and roach it so as to puta bow in its neck; then I put the bunch on good green feed where theywould fatten and shed off; but it was wasted effort. They looked so muchlike field mice I was afraid that cats would make a mistake. After theygot fat the biggest one looked as if he'd weigh close up to seven hundredand fifty. It was when they had begun to buy mules too; that is to say,mules! But no such luck as a new West Pointer coming to inspect these;nothing but wise old cavalry captains that when they put an eye on thebunch would grin friendly at me and hesitate only long enough to put somewater in the radiator. I bet there never was a bunch of three-year-oldmules that stood so much condemning.

  After offering 'em for forty a head one time to a party and having himanswer very simply by asking how the road was on beyond and which turndid he take, I quit bothering. After that when buyers come along I toldthe truth and said I didn't have any mules. I had to keep my real ones,and it wasn't worth while showing those submules. And this was the bunchSandy had told S.F. Timmins he could take away for a hundred a head--oreven ninety-five. And Safety hadn't laughed!

  And would you have wondered when he sifts in a couple days later andmakes me a cold offer of sixty dollars a head for this choice livestock?Yes, sir! He says "Live and let live" is his motto, and he wants to provethat I have wronged him in the past if I ever had the faintest suspicionthat he wasn't the ideal party to have in on a deal that was going to neteveryone concerned a handsome fortune. He says the fact is money goesthrough his fingers like water if you come right down to it; and sixty oreven sixty-five if I want to push him to extremes, because he's the lastman on God's green earth to let five dollars split up old neighboursthat ought to be hand and glove in any new deal that come up.

  It like to of keeled me over, but I recovered and become busier than everand got out my bank book and begun to figure over that. I said SandySawtelle had the handling of this particular bunch of my assets andI couldn't be bothered by it.

  So he mooches down to the barn till Sandy come in with Buck Devine.They was chattering about three hundred thousand dollars in round numberswhen they got near enough for him to overhear their private conversation.They wondered why they had wasted so much of their lives in the cattlebusiness, but now them old hard-working days was over, or soon would be,with nothing to do but travel round in Pullman palace cars and seeAmerica first, and go to movies, and so forth. Safety wished to hagglesome about the mules, but Sandy says he's already stated the price inclear, ringing tones, and he has no time to waste, being that I mustsend him down that night to get an order on the wire for two carloadsof the Little Giant peanut. Safety just blinked at this, not even askingwhy the peanuts; and the boys left him cold.

  When I told 'em about the offer to me of sixty or a possible sixty-five,they at once done a medicine dance.

  "This here will be the richest coop ever pulled off west of Cheyenne,"says Buck; and Sandy says he guesses anybody not blind can now see thatwell-known street in New York he ought to have his office on. He sayshe hopes Safety don't fall too easy, because he wants more chance towork it up.

  But Sandy is doomed to disappointment. Safety holds off only two daysmore. Two days he loafs round at mealtimes, listening to their richconverse and saying he'd like to know who's a better friend of thisoutfit than he's been for twenty years. The boys tell him if he's sucha good friend to go ahead and prove it with a little barter that wouldbe sure to touch my heart. And the first day Safety offers seventy-fivea head for these here jack rabbits, which they calmly ignore and go ontalking about Liberty Bonds being a good safe investment; and the secondday he just cries like a child that he'll pay eighty-five and trust totheir honour that he's to have in on this new sure-thing deal.

  That seemed enough, so they all shook hands with the spendthrift andslapped him on the back in good fellowship, and said they knew all thetime he had a heart of gold and they feel free to say now that once themoney has passed he won't be let to go off the place till he has heardall about the new enterprise and let in on the ground floor, and theyhope he won't ever forget this moment when the money begins to roll infit to smother him in round numbers. So Safety says he knows they're agood square set of boys, as clean as a hound's tooth, and he'll be overto-morrow to take over the stock and hear the interesting details.

  The boys set up late that night figuring their share of the burglary.There was twenty-five of these ground squirrels. I was to get my fifty ahead, at least ten of which wa
s illegitimate. Then for the thirty-five,which was the real robbery, I was to take half, and eight of the boys theother half. I begun to wonder that night just what could be done to usunder the criminal law. It looked like three years in some good jailwouldn't be a bit too harsh.

  Next day bright and early here comes frugal Safety, gangling along behindhis whiskers and bringing one of his ill-fed hirelings to help drive thestuff back. Safety is rubbing his hands and acting very sprightly, withan air of false good fellowship. It almost seems like he was afraid theyhad thought better of the trade and might try to crawl out. He wants itover quick. They all go down and help him drive his purchase out of thelower field, where they been hiding in the tall grass, and in no timeat all have the bunch headed down the lane on to the county road, withSafety's man keeping well up to protect 'em from the coyotes.

  Next there's kind of a solemn moment when the check is being made out.Safety performs that serious operation down at the bunk house. Making outany check is always the great adventure with him. He writes it with hisheart's blood, and not being the greatest scholar in the world he has tocount the letters in his name after it's written--he knows there ought tobe nine together--and then he has to wipe the ink off his hands and sighdismally and say if this thing keeps up he'll be spending his old age atthe poor farm, and so forth. It all went according to schedule, exceptthat he seemed strangely eager and under a severe nervous strain.

  Me? I'd been, sort of hanging round on the edge of events while thedastardly deed was being committed, not seeming to be responsible in anyway. My Lord! I still wanted to be able to face the bereaved man as anhonest woman and tell him it was only some nonsense of the boys for whichI could not be held under the law, no matter how good a lawyer he'd get.When they come trooping out of the bunk house I was pretending to consultAbner, the blacksmith, about some mower parts. And right off I was struckby the fact that Safety seemed to be his old self again; his air of falsegayety and nervous strain had left him and he was cold and silent anddeadly, like the poisonous cobra of India.

  But now they was going to spring the new secret enterprise on him, so Imoved off toward the house a bit, not wanting to be too near when hisscreams begun. It did seem kind of shameful, taking advantage of theold miser's grasping habits; still, I remembered a few neat things he'ddone to me and I didn't slink too far into the background. Safety wasstanding by his horse with the boys all gathered close round him, and Iheard Sandy say "Elephants--nothing but elephants--that's the new idea!"

  Then they all begun to talk at once, jabbering about the peanuts andpopcorn that crowds of people will come to buy from us to feed back toour stock, and how there's more meat in an elephant than in six steers,and about how the punchers will be riding round in these little cupalosup on top of their big saddle elephants; and they kept getting swifterand more excited in their talk, till at last they just naturally explodedwhen they made sure Safety got the idea and would know he'd been made afool of. They had a grand time; threw their hats in the air and dancedround their victim and punched each other, and their yells and heartylaughter could of been heard for miles up and down the creek. Two orthree had guns they let off to add to the gleeful noise. Oh, it wasdeuces wild for about three minutes. They nearly died laughing.

  Then the whole thing kind of died a strange and painful death. Safetywasn't taking on one bit like a man that's been stung. He stood therecold and malignant and listened to the noise and didn't bat an eye tillhe just naturally quelled the disorder. It got as still as a church, andthen Safety talked a little in a calm voice.

  "Elephants?" says he, kind of amused. "Why, elephants ain't no good stockproposition because it takes 'em so long to mature! Elephants is often ahundred and twenty years old. You'd have to feed one at least forty yearsto get him fit to ship. I really am surprised at you boys, going into aproposition like that without looking up the details. It certainly ain'tanything for my money. Why, you couldn't even veal an elephant till hewas about fifteen years old, which would need at least six thousanddollars' worth of peanuts; and what kind of a stock business is that, I'dlike to know. And even if they could rustle their own feed, what kind ofa business is it where you could only ship once in a lifetime? You boysmake me tired, going hell-bent into an enterprise where you'd all be deadand forgotten before the first turnover of your stock."

  He now looked at 'em in a sad, rebuking manner. It was like an icy blastfrom Greenland the way he took it.

  Two or three tried to start the big laugh again, but their yips wasfeeble and died quickly out. They just stood there foolish. Even SandySawtelle couldn't think of anything bright to say.

  Safety now climbs on his horse, strangely cheerful, and says; "Well, I'llhave to be getting along with them new mules of mine." Then he kind ofgiggled at the crowd and says: "I certainly got the laugh on this outfit,starting a business where this here old Methusalem hisself could hardlyget it going good before death cut him off!"

  And away he rides, chuckling like it was an awful joke on us. Not asingle scream of agony about what had been done to him with them stuntedmules.

  Of course that was all I needed to know. One deadly chill of fear took mefrom head to foot. I knew perfectly well our trench was mined and thefuse lighted. Up comes this chucklehead of a Sawtelle, and for once inhis life he's puzzled.

  "Well," he says, "you got to give old S.F. credit for one thing. Did yousee the way he tried to switch the laugh over on to us, and me with histrusty check right here in my hand? I never would have thought it, buthe is certainly one awful good game loser!"

  "Game loser nothing!" I says. "He's just a game winner. Any time you seethat old boy acting game he's won. And he's won now, no matter how muchthe known facts look against it. I don't know how, but he's won."

  They all begin to tell me I must be mistaken, because look at the pricewe got for stuff we hadn't been able to sell at any price before. I saysI am looking at that, but I'm also obliged to look at Safety after he'spaid that price, and the laws of Nature certainly ain't been suspendedall at once. I offer to bet 'em what they've made on the deal that Safetyhas run true to form. "Mark my words," I says, "this is one sad day forthe Arrowhead! I don't know how or why, but we'll soon find out; and ifyou don't believe me, now's the time to double your money."

  But they hung off on that. They got too much respect for my judgment. Andthey admitted that Safety's way of standing the gaff had been downrightuncanny. So there was nothing to do but pay over their share of thistainted money and wait for the blow, eight hundred and seventy-fivedollars being the amount I split with 'em for their masterly headworkin the depredation.

  That very day in the mail comes a letter that has been delayed becausethis here Government of ours pinches a penny even worse than old Timminsdoes. Yes, sir; this letter had been mailed at Seattle with a two-centstamp the day after the Government had boosted the price to three cents.And what does the Government do? Does it say: "Oh, send it along! Whypinch pennies?" Not at all. It takes a printed card and a printedenvelope and the time of a clerk and an R.F.D. mail carrier to send meword that I must forward one cent if I want this letter--spends at leasttwo cents to get one cent. Well, it takes two days for that notice toreach me; and of course I let it lie round a couple of days, thinkingit's probably an advertisement; and then two days for my one-cent stampto go back to this parsimonious postmaster; and two days for the letterto get here; making about eight days, during which things had happenedthat I should of known about. Yes, sir; it's a great Government that willworry over one cent and then meet one of these smooth profiteers andloosen up on a million dollars like a cowhand with three months' payhitting a wet town. Of course it was all over when I read this letter.

  * * * * *

  I rolled another cigarette for the injured woman it being no time forwords.

  "It just goes to show," she observed after the first relishing draft,"that we should be honest, even with defectives like old Timmins. Thisman in Seattle that keeps track of prices fo
r me writes that the top ofthe mule market has blown sky-high; that if I got anything looking at alllike a mule not to let it go off the place for less than two hundreddollars, because mule buyers is sure desperate. Safety must of got thesame tip, only you can bet his correspondent put the full three centson the letter. Safety would never have trusted a strange postmaster withthe excess. Anyway he sold that bunch of rabbits a week later for onehundred and seventy-five a head, thus adding twenty-two hundred and fiftydollars of my money to his tainted fortune. You can imagine the pins andneedles he'd been on for a week, scared I'd get the tip and knowing if heeven mentioned them runts at any price whatever that I'd be wise at once.That joke of the boys must of seemed heaven-sent to him.

  "You ought to heard the lecture I read them fool punchers on commonhonesty and how the biter is always bit. I scared 'em good; there hasn'tbeen an elephant on the place since that day. They're a chastened lot,all right. I was chastened myself. I admit it. I don't hardly believeI'll ever attempt anything crooked on old Safety again---and yet, I don'tknow."

  The lady viciously expelled the last smoke from her cigarette and againtook up the knitting.

  "I don't really know but if there was some wanton, duplicity come up thatI could handle myself and not have to leave to that pack of amateurthieves out in the bunk house, and it was dead sure and I didn't riskdoing more than two years' penal servitude--yes, I really don't know.Even now mebbe all ain't over between us."