[Illustration: "Up gets Foxy with a shriek
and gallops around the house">[
Wind River looked scart. "Say!" says he. "Say! Thet hawg knows I'm er-lyin' jes' 's well 's I do!" After that old Windy used to talk to the pig as though they'd been raised together.
Foxey Bill made one miscalculation. He thought he was a small pet, like a cat. This didn't jibe with the five hundred pounds of meat he toted. And, like a cat, one of his principal amusements was to have his back scratched. If you didn't pay attention to him, when he squealed so pretty for you to please curry him with a board, he'd hump up his back, like a cat, and rub against your legs. You instantly landed on your scalp-lock and waved the aforesaid legs in the air. Of course, when the other fellers saw this comin', they didn't feel it restin' on their conscience to call your attention to it—in fact, we sometimes busied one another talkin' to give Foxey a fair field. So Foxey had things his own way around the diggin's for some time.
Then comes bow-legged Hastings, our boss, with a ram tied hard and fast in the bottom of the waggon. He explains to us that the ram is valuable, but that he's butted merry Halifax out of everything down to home, and he don't want to shut him up, so will we please take care of him? And we said No—Wanitchee heap—we guessed not—never.
Then Hastings got mad and talked to us, flyin' his hands. Such a disobligin', stubborn, sour outfit he never saw, he said. What was the use of his bein' boss, when we just laid awake nights thinkin' up disagreeable things to do to him? Was there ever a time that he'd asked us to do this or that, that every man in reach didn't r'ar up and jump down his throat? He said he'd rather be a nigger rooster on a condemned government steamboat than bear the title of boss of such a rag-chewin' hide-bound set of mules; kick, kick, kick—nothin' but kick, and life wasn't worth livin'.
[Illustration: "Old Windy used to talk to the pig
as though they'd been raised together">[
So then he went behind the shack and pouted. Well, we liked Hastings, and this made us feel bad—that's the way he worked us.
The Doctor, he fried up a dish of all-sorts in his happiest manner and took it around in a cheerful voice. No. Didn't want food. Heart was broke. So then we all went and apologised and agreed to keep the ram. Then Hastings recovered, and we had that cussed sheep on our hands and feet and all over us.