The Virginian looked grave. “Don’t be hasty. Maybe the day will come when you and me’ll need ’em to chew our tenderloin.”
“We’ll be old. Horacles is twenty-five.”
“Twenty-five is certainly young to commence eatin’ by machinery,” admitted the Virginian.
“And he’s proud of ’em,” whined Scipio. “Proud! Opens his bone box and sticks ’em out at y’u on the end of his tongue.”
“I hate an immodest man,” said the Virginian.
“Why, he hadn’t any better sense than to do it over to the officers’ club right before the ladies and everybody the other night. The K. O.’s wife said it gave her the creeps—and she don’t look sensitive.”
“Well,” said the Virginian, “if I weighed three hundred pounds I’d be turrable sensitive.”
“She had to leave,” pursued Scipio. “Had to take her little girl away from the show. Them teeth comin’ out of Horacles’es mouth the way they did sent the child into hysterics. Y’u could hear her screechin’ half way down the line.”
The Virginian looked at his watch. “I wonder if that Agent is coming here at all to-day?”
Scipio’s worried face darkened again. “What can I do? What can I?” he demanded. And he rose and limped up and down where the ponies were tied in front of the store. The fickle Indians would soon be tying these ponies in front of the rival store. “I received this business in good shape,” continued Scipio, “and I’ll hand it back in bad.”