This day Dad was maneuvering around to unload the apprentice on Mackenzie for good. He worked up to it gradually, as if feeling his way with his good foot ahead, careful not to be too sudden and plunge into a hole.
“I don’t like a feller around that talks so much,” Dad complained. “When he’s around a man ain’t got no time to think and plan and lay his projec’s for what he’s a goin’ to do. All I can do to put a word in edgeways once in a while.”
It appeared plain enough that Dad’s sore spot was this very inability to land as many words as he thought he had a right to. That is the complaint of any talkative person. If you are a good listener, with a yes and a no now and then, a talkative man will tell your friends you are the most interesting conversationalist he ever met.
“I don’t mind him,” Mackenzie said, knowing very well that Dad would soon be so hungry for somebody to unload his words upon that he would be talking to the sheep. “Ship him over to me when you’re tired of him; I’ll work some of the wind out of him inside of a week.”
“I’ll send him this evenin’,” said Dad, eager in his relief, brightening like an uncovered coal. “Them dogs 140 Joan give you’s breakin’ in to the sound of your voice wonderful, ain’t they?”
“They’re getting used to me slowly.”
“Funny about dogs a woman’s been runnin’ sheep with. Mighty unusual they’ll take up with a man after that. I used to be married to a Indian woman up on the Big Wind that was some hummer trainin’ sheep-dogs. That woman could sell ’em for a hundred dollars apiece as fast as she could raise ’em and train ’em up, and them dad-splashed collies they’d purt’ near all come back home after she’d sold ’em. Say, I’ve knowed them dogs to come back a hundred and eighty mile!”
“That must have been a valuable woman to have around a man’s camp. Where is she now, if I’m not too curious?”
“She was a good woman, one of the best women I ever had.” Dad rubbed his chin, eyes reflectively on the ground, stood silent a spell that was pretty long for him. “I hated like snakes to lose that woman––her name was Little Handful Of Rabbit Hair On A Rock. Ye-es. She was a hummer on sheep-dogs, all right. She took a swig too many out of my jug one day and tripped over a stick and tumbled into the hog-scaldin’ tank.”
“What a miserable end!” said Mackenzie, shocked by the old man’s indifferent way of telling it.