Zeb shoved his hands down in his overall pockets and frowned at the sun.
“It’s twenty miles to Mill City, Ricky. Did yuh ever think about what a walk that is?”
“Gosh, uh sore thumb is terrible, Zeb!” wailed Ricky. “I ain’t in no shape to walk a tall now. Twenty miles! Gee, Zeb, I never did nor never will walk that far with my insides cryin’ out fer grub th’ way they are right now. I reckon I’ve plumb lost my appetite.”
“I’m gittin’ sorta finicky myself,” agreed Zeb. “I don’t seem to look upon uh piece uh sheep meat th’ way uh hungry man should.”
A continuous repast of mutton and salt is almost sure to make even the best of digestive apparatus go awry. They had eaten it roasted in the coals, baked in clay, boiled in the water bucket and fried on a piece of the sheet-iron stove which had survived the explosion. The morning meal had been thrown away untasted.
That day they laid in the shade of the lone pine tree, too miserable to even play seven-up. At dinner-time they grinned and pulled up another notch on their belts. Both of them were inveterate cigaret-smokers—or rather had been until, as Ricky remarked:
“Dynamite is uh sure cure fer th’ cigaret habit, Zeb. She cures but she don’t remove th’ cravin’.”
That night they wended their weary way back to the bed ground and left the sheep out on the range. They had decided that there was no reason for bringing in the herd. If the cattlemen were bent on chasing them out of the country, why not let them have the trouble of rounding them up?
“Want some boiled mutton?” asked Ricky, after they had thrown their tired bodies down on the ground above the spring.
Zeb sat up and reached for a rock but the effort was too much and he flopped down again.