“Yes, I figger that’s about the size of it. I don’t know what Matt was doin’ over around here this evenin’; I know I didn’t send for him.”
“Joan spoke of him this afternoon. From what she said, I thought he must be something of a specimen. What kind of a looking duck is he?”
“Matt’s a mixture of a goriller and a goose egg. He’s a long-armed, short-legged, gimlet-eyed feller with a head like a egg upside down. You could split a board on that feller’s head and never muss a hair. I never saw a man that had a chin like Matt Hall. They say a big chin’s the sign of strength, and if that works out Matt must have a mind like a brigadier general. His face is all chin; chin’s an affliction on Matt Hall; it’s a disease. Wait till you see him; that’s all I can say.”
“I’ll know him when I do.”
“Hector ain’t so bad, but he’s got a look in his eyes like a man that’d grab you by the nose and cut your throat, and grin while he was doin’ it.”
Mackenzie made no comment on these new and picturesque characters introduced by Dad into the drama that was forming for enactment in that place. He filled his pipe and smoked a little while. Then:
“How many sheep do they run?” he asked.
“Nine or ten thousand, I guess.”
Silence again. Dad was smoking a little Mexican 81 cigarette with corn-husk wrapper, a peppery tobacco filling that smarted the eyes when it burned, of which he must have carried thousands when he left the border in the spring.
“Tim was over today,” said Mackenzie.