VI
COUSIN EGBERT INTERVENES
"It takes all kinds of foreigners to make a world," said Ma Pettengill—irrelevantly I thought, because the remark seemed to be inspired merely by the announcement of Sandy Sawtelle that the mule Jerry's hip had been laid open by a kick from the mule Alice, and that the bearer of the news had found fourteen stitches needed to mend the rent.
Sandy brought his news to the owner of the Arrowhead as she relaxed in my company on the west veranda of the ranch house and scented the golden dusk with burning tobacco of an inferior but popular brand. I listened but idly to the minute details of the catastrophe, discovering more entertainment in the solemn wake of light a dulled sun was leaving as it slipped over the sagging rim of Arrowhead Pass. And yet, through my absorption with the shadows that now played far off among the folded hills, there did come sharply the impression that this Sawtelle person was dwelling too insistently upon the precise number of stitches required by the breach in Jerry's hide.
"Fourteen—yes, ma'am; fourteen stitches. That there Alice mule sure needs handling. Fourteen regular ones. I'd certainly show her where to head in at, like now she was my personal property. Me, I'd abuse her shamefully. Only eleven I took last time in poor old Jerry; and here now it's plumb fourteen—yes, ma'am; fourteen good ones. Say, you get fourteen of them stitches in your hide, and I bet—thought, at first, I could make twelve do, but it takes full fourteen, with old Jerry nearly tearing the chute down while I was taking these fourteen—"
I began to see numbers black against that glowing panorama in the west. A monstrous 14 repeated itself stubbornly along the gorgeous reach of it.
"Yes, ma'am—fourteen; you can go out right now and count 'em yourself. And like mebbe I'll have to go down to town to-morrow for some more of that King of Pain Liniment, on account of Lazarus and Bryan getting good and lamed in this same mix-up, and me letting fall the last bottle we had on the place and busting her wide open—"
"Don't you bother to bust any more!" broke in his employer in a tone that I found crisp with warning. "There's a whole new case of King of Pain in the storeroom."
"Huh!" exclaimed the surgeon, ably conveying disappointment thereby. "And like now if I did go down I could get the new parts for that there mower—"