“An hour after dark I’ll be shoving those cows across the line,” Carver promised. “Meantime you might advance a hundred. Unfortunately I’m just out of funds.”
“Unfortunately,” said Hinman, “you’re just always out.” He counted off the money. “You’ve worked for me on and off ever since you was big enough to claw your way up onto a horse and on some occasions you’ve exercised such fair average judgment in looking after my affairs that I’ve wondered why on all occasions you was such a poor hand to look after your own.”
“I’ve been so taken up with your business that I’ve sort of let my own interests drift along,” Carver explained.
“You’re right handy at doing things for me,” Hinman resumed. “But when it comes to doing anything for yourself you’re somewhat the most tinkering, trifling specimen I’ve come acrost. You really ought to settle on some one job and stick at it.”
“That’s my one favorite motto,” Carver confessed. “Stick to your bush—and be exhibited among the vegetables.”
He turned his eye upon a tumbleweed that raced madly past before the wind. The dried skeleton was of the general size and shape of a pumpkin. Two more of these discontented wraiths of the prairies hurtled past.
“Now there goes a vegetable with ambitions,” said Carver. “Every winter the tumbleweed tribe stages a protest against being mere plants rooted forever to one spot.” He chanted a few of the numberless verses of a prairie song:
“Our size and shape is similar,”
Said the tumbleweed to the pumpkin.