Muley throws his coat over the cage, and slams the whole works into the house. He follers it inside, and I sets there for a while thinking things over. The slats on Amelia’s home ain’t none too secure, so I loosens one end, and as I goes inside the bunk-house I sees Amelia trotting off toward the barn.
Muley comes down after a while and sets down on the bunk. “Alfred danged near bit my finger off, and Amelia’s made her getaway, Hen,” he announces in a sad voice. “Amelia was down there on the corral fence, making faces at Chuck’s coyote pup, and she offers fight when I tries to calm her spirits. Aunt Agnes must have been a nut over ferocious animals.”
“Nevertheless she was your mother’s sister, and left you all her wealth,” I chides him.
“Yah! Like throwing both ends of a rope to a drownding man, and forgetting to hang on to the middle. Can’t marry for five—huh!”
He gets up and stomps out of the place, and I opines that Muley’s inheritance is beginning to bear down upon his immortal soul.
The next day Hank Padden, who owns the Seven A outfit, shows up, and sets down with me in the parlor. Muley is washing up, and when Hank asks for him he yells that he’ll be out in a minute.
“I’m going to make Muley an offer,” says Hank to me, confident-like. “I hears that he’s going to get married, and I needs a foreman what is a married man. Sabe? Single men ain’t got nothing to hold ’em down. I like Muley—dang his fat carcass—and I rides over here to see him.”
“Uh-huh,” says I, ’cause there ain’t nothing else to say, and then Hank yells at Muley:
“Come out here, you half-ton puncher! I want to talk to you about——”
“Sheep dip! Sheep dip! Har, har, har!”