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The Happy Family by B. M. Bower
page 6 of 244 (02%)
Andy, being a cowpuncher of the brand known as a "real," objected
strongly both to the term and the tone. He stood up and stared down at
the other disapprovingly. "I don't as a general thing find myself
guilty of talking in my sleep," he retorted, "and I'm prepared to let
anything I say stand till the next throw. We may be some vociferous,
out here twixt the Mississippi and the Rockies, but we ain't no
infant-in-the-cradle, Mister. We had civilization here when the
Pilgrim Fathers' rock wasn't nothing but a pebble to let fly at the
birds!"

"Indeed!" fleered Sherwood Branciforte, in a voice which gave much
intangible insult to one's intelligence.

Andy clicked his teeth together, which was a symptom it were well for
the other to recognize but did not. Then Andy smiled, which was
another symptom. He fingered the spur absently, laid it down and
reached, with the gesture that betrays the act as having become second
nature, for his papers and tobacco sack.

"Uh course, you mean all right, and you ain't none to blame for what
you don't know, but you're talking wild and scattering. When you stand
up and tell me I can't point to nothing man-made that's fifty years
old, or a hundred, you make me feel sorry for yuh. I can take you to
something--or I've seen something--that's older than swearing; and I
reckon that art goes back to when men wore their hair long and a
sheep-pelt was called ample for dress occasions."

"Are you crazy, man?" Sherwood Branciforte exclaimed incredulously.

"Not what you can notice. You wait whilst I explain. Once last fall I
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