Some time after Mose had disappeared up the cañon, Parker heard a loud echoing laugh. He turned his head to listen, and then raised the glass and leveled it on Starkweather's ranch.
"I thought at first that was Idy," he said to himself, "but it wa'n't. She 's got a cheerful disposition, but I don't believe she'd laugh that a-way when she's a-learnin' a bull calf to drink; that ain't what I call a laughin' job. Jeemineezer! don't she hold that cantankerous little buzzard's head down pretty. Whoa there, Calamity! don't you back into the chicken corral. That's right, Idy, jam his head into the bucket, an' set down on it—you're a daisy!"
III.
On the strength of Mose's friendly encouragement, Parker betook himself next day to where Eben Starkweather was trimming greasewood roots, and moved about sociably from one hillock to another while his neighbor worked. Nothing but the ardor of unspoken love would have reconciled Parker to the exertion involved, for Eben worked briskly, in spite of his singularity of lung and the disadvantages of "asmy," and the greasewood was not very thick on the ground he had been clearing. The grotesque gnarled roots were collected in little heaps, like piles of discarded heathen images, and Eben hacked about among them, a very mild-mannered but determined iconoclast.
"I'll have to keep at it pretty studdy," he explained apologetically to his visitor, "fer they say we're like enough not to have any more rain, and I'm calc'latin' to grub out the vineyard before the ground hardens up."
"Goin' to yank them vines all out, are ye?"
"That's the calc'lation."
Parker clasped one knee, and whetted his knife on the toe of his boot reflectively.
"'Pears to me ye might sell off that vineyard, an' buy a strip t' other side of ye, an' set out muscats."
"I couldn't sell that vineyard," said Eben. He had laid down his axe, and was wiping his forehead nervously with an old silk handkerchief.