"Miz Horne," said he, "wouldn't send a greenhorn. No, sir; she wants somebody who'll look like something in decent company. Say, if I get any stronger with ol' Horne, he'd ought to raise me. Don't you reckon?"
Cheered by the prospect, he began a monologue to his horse, a habit Mr. Johnson had acquired in lonely places. "Doggone your fat head, why can't you lift your feet? Hey? Hold still, can't you, till I light this cigarette? Oh, you needn't look back. You know I'm here all right."
In early afternoon we crossed a cañon on the far side of The Hatter and turned to the left along a mesa. Lafe puckered his eyes, squinted carefully and said: "Well, I swan. Do you see that?"
A man was sitting on the skull of a horse and he was counting the tops of the hills. It struck me as a profitless form of endeavor. As we neared him: "No," he remarked, "that's not right. I made it two thousand and three before."
"Off in your tally, pardner?" Lafe inquired civilly.
He proceeded, unheeding, with his simple addition. "One thousand and seventy-six, and those five little fellows make—what do they make, now?" He broke off to scratch his head in vexation. He looked at Johnson briefly and then stared at me.
"That fellow there," he said, with a nod at Lafe, "that fellow's crazy. Everybody's crazy out here—all but me."
He was not an old man, but his hair was grizzled and fell in dirty disorder to his shoulders. We could see portions of him through his clothes, and a sleeve of his shirt was not. Yet I began to marvel, for he spoke with the accent of culture.
"There used to be three thousand four hundred and eight scrub-cedars on that big mountain yonder," he confided to me. "I've lost count a bit lately, though. What do you make 'em?"
"You're short six. Four hundred and fourteen—not four hundred and eight."