"Some sort of peanut politics, Pen. Is Sara alone now? I'll go talk to him."
As if in answer Sara's voice came from the tent which they were almost upon. "Pen, come here!"
Pen did not quicken her pace. "I don't like to change speeds going up a steep grade," she called.
"You hustle when I call you!" roared Sara.
Jim pulled the reins off his arm and dropped them to the ground over the horse's head, the simple process which hitches a desert horse. He left Pen with long strides and entered the tent.
"Sara, if I hear you talk to Pen that way again, I don't care if you are forty times a cripple, I'll punch your face in! What's the matter with you, anyhow? Did your tongue get a twist with your back?"
"Get out of here!" shouted Sara.
Jim recovered his poise at the sight of Pen's anxious eyes. "Now Sweetness," he said to Sara, "don't hurry me! You make me so nervous when you speak that way to me! I think I'll get a burro up here for you to talk to. He'd understand the richness of your vocabulary. Look here now, Sara, we all know you're having a darned hard time and there isn't anything we wouldn't do for you. Don't you realize that Pen is sacrificing her whole life to being your nurse girl? Don't you think you ought to make it as easy for her as you can?"
"Easy!" mocked Sara. "Easy for anyone that can walk and run and come and go? What consideration do they need?"
Pen and Jim winced a little. There was a whole world of tragedy in Sara's mockery. He looked fat and middle-aged. His hair was graying fast. His fingers trembled a good deal although the strength in his arms still was prodigious. Yet Pen and Jim both had a sense of resentment that Sara should take his life tragedy so ill, a feeling that he was indecorous in flaunting his bitterness in their faces. As if he sensed their resentment, Sara went on sneeringly: