Chuck’s legs are as short as his memory, and he was born with the face of a horse and the trusting eyes of an angel. He never told the truth but once. A big feller, from down below Mesquite, took him down and bumped his head on the ground.
“You got enough?” asks the big person, and Chuck howls—
“Plenty!”
“You ain’t lying, are you?” asks the feller, after he lets Chuck up.
Chuck brushes off his clothes and shakes his sore head:
“No! Dang it all! I wasn’t in no position to lie about it!”
Muley told me that I couldn’t keep a secret, and I didn’t. Me and Chuck and Telescope rides to town that afternoon, to foller out the usual program expected of punchers with a month’s pay aboard, and I tells them about Muley’s troubles.
“He’s more to be censured than pitied,” admits Chuck. “I don’t blame Zeb, but I do hate a shepherd what thinks a puncher ain’t good enough for his relatives.”
“Poor Muley,” says Telescope, sad-like, “any man what is just one aunt shy of being an orphan has my sympathy. I’ll promise you, Hen, that I’ll do all I can.”
“In Muley’s name I thanks you,” says I, “but if you can’t do it for Muley don’t do it on my account. I ain’t going to marry her. I just feel sorry for him. I’d feel sorry for anybody what was in love with Susie.”