Me and Dirty sets there like a pair of mummies and watches that forlorn-looking hombre herd our long-eared rolling-stock across the hills. Dirty jerks a rock at a sand-lizard, and yanks his hat down over his ears. We glares at each other for a moment.
“Shepherd!” hisses Dirty. “You sheep-attacher!”
“Ditto!” I hisses back at him. “You sheep-receptacle!”
If there ever was an age when jackrabbits spoke with tin-whistle voices Scenery Sims was a throwback to that period. Him and Alphabetical Allen are two things, the same of which the dictionary designates as inanimate objects. If you can imagine a pair of ciphers with the rims rubbed out—you’ve got my opinion of them two hombres to a gnat’s eyebrow.
“I’m going to kill Magpie Simpkins some day,” says Dirty, mean-like.
“Uh-huh,” says I. “That sounds like you, Dirty. You’re always going to kill somebody the day after. You think too slow.” We sets there a while longer, and then Dirty yawns.
“Might as well find ’em, I reckon. You attach ’em and I’ll do the receiving, Ike.” We pokes over the ridge, and after going about a mile we hears the voices of lamblets, and then we sees the teepee, which we deciphers to be the sheep-camp. In her callow youth she might have been a tent, but the wear and tear of sheeping existence has put her in the sere and yaller leaf, with a touch of color, where somebody’s red-flannel shirt has patched up a hole in one side.
“Well,” says Dirty, “she ain’t much, but it’s home, Ike.”
“It is ever so humble,” I agrees, and we slid down to it.
As we walks up to the front the flap opens, and out comes the head of an inhuman being. This face is so classified, ’cause no human being could have so much hair on its face and still breathe—not without gills.