While his mother prepared breakfast and his father watered and harnessed the mare, the Schoonover baby inspected the creature. He pulled its ears and kicked it with fine deliberation on the point of the nose.
“Do you aim to leave it here, Brother Schoonover?” his wife asked, when they were ready to set forward.
“Shore. The hide ain’t no good at this season. And he’s shot all to bits. Do you know, Sally Jo, I got a idea this is the same ol’ mountain line what found our son? It’s like he’s the same one that eat the pore li’l’ Mexican, too, don’t you reckon? Ol’ Bowallopus?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me none,” she answered, and shuddered. Her husband spurned the carcass with his boot.
They got under way. High up in the sky appeared two black specks. Brother Schoonover pointed to them.
“They’ll rip him to pieces in no time. But we’ll keep the claws and whiskers and the end of his tail for the baby to play with. Hey, Sally Jo?”
The specks grew larger. Soon they showed as birds, hovering on effortless wings above the camping ground. Brother Schoonover whacked the mare in high glee, and they set out again on their pilgrimage.
Before they had gone half a mile, the buzzards shot from the blue vault to earth.
VIII
THE MANKILLER
All this happened in the Bad Year, which was not so many months ago. The outfit issued daily from their camps--riding bog, skinning cattle and driving in the helpless to the home pastures to be fed on oil-cake and alfalfa. The cows were walking skeletons, wild of eye, ready to wheel in impotent anger on their rescuers; or sinking weakly to the ground at the least urging, never to rise again. Every creek was dry. Springs that were held eternal became slimy mudholes and a trap. A well-grown man could easily step across the San Pedro, oozing sluggishly past mauled carcasses.