I know it’s Alfred, but if it don’t sound like Muley I’ll eat my quirt. Same little wheeze that Muley has in his laugh.
Hank comes to his feet like a shot, and glares at the half-closed door. He puts on his hat, walks straight out of the door, gets on his bronc and fogs away from the Cross J.
I hears a crash in the next room, a couple of shrieks, and out comes Alfred with most of his tail feathers missing. He sails around the room a couple of times, finally hits the open door, and perches on the hitch-rack in front of the house.
Muley comes out, with a shotgun in his hand, and glares around.
“Natural lifetime, Muley,” I informs him, and he tosses the gun on the sofa.
“That bird will be the death of me, Henry!” he wails, “yelping sheep-talk at Hank Padden is like lighting a cigaret with a stick of dynamite. What did he want of me?”
“He came over to sympathize with you about your aunt.”
“Oh!” says Muley, blank-like, looking out of the window. “Ain’t this Wick Smith coming?”
It was Wick. He ties his bronc and comes inside. To hear him talk you’d think that rheumatism had typhoid-pneumonia and bubonic plague beat so far that you could cure ’em both with internal applications of peach pie.
“I got to get away from here,” states Wick, after we discusses the weather a while. “Every season I lives here brings me that much nearer the grave. I want to take a pardner into my store, and while I ain’t decided exactly about it, I comes up here to have a talk with Muley. I needs new blood in my place, and I got to have a married man, which has a little money. Sabe?”