“Yuh didn’t?”
Ike inhaled deeply at the wonder of it all.
“Yuh never seen him before, eh? Well, I’ll just say that yo’re lucky, if yuh needed a hot bath. Big Medicine ain’t in the habit of lettin’ strangers use his private tub. Yuh see, he’s got an idea that somebody might beat him out of the spring.”
“Is it worth anythin’?” asked Sleepy.
“Hell, I dunno.” Ike wrinkled his nose. “Not to me, it ain’t. I’ve been here a long time, but she still smells like hell. I suppose she’s worth somethin’. I dunno. Goin’ to stay long?”
Sleepy told him why they hadn’t gone back to town.
“That makes me paw my head,” declared Ike. “Mebbe you and yore pardner hypnotized Big Medicine.”
“What kind of a feller is he?” asked Sleepy.
“Jist what you’ve seen. He’s two kinds of person, if yuh know what I mean. Sometimes he gits dignified as a undertaker and talks like a book, and the next minute he talks like the rest of us. Who in hell was Shakespeare?”
“I dunno him,” admitted Sleepy.