"Obstinacy or love, that a-way, when folks pushes 'em to excess, is shore
bad medicine. Which I'd be aheap loath to count the numbers them two
attribootes harries to the tomb. Why, son, it's them sentiments that
kills off my two wheel mules, Tom an' Jerry."

The Old Cattleman appeared to be on the verge of abstract discussion. As
a metaphysician, he was not to be borne with. There was one method of
escape; I interfered to coax the currents of his volubility into other
and what were to me, more interesting channels.

"Tell me of the trail; or a story about animals," I urged. "You were
saying recently that perfect systems of oral if not verbal communication
existed among mules, and that you had listened for hours to their gossip.
Give me the history of one of your freighting trips and what befell along
the trail; and don't forget the comment thereon--wise, doubtless, it
was--of your long-eared servants of the rein and trace-chain."

"Tell you what chances along the trail? Son, you-all opens a wide-flung
range for my mem'ry to graze over. I might tell you how I'm lost once,
freightin' from Vegas into the Panhandle, an' am two days without
water--blazin' Jooly days so hot you couldn't touch tire, chain, or
bolt-head without fryin' your fingers. An' how at the close of the
second day when I hauls in at Cabra Springs, I lays down by that cold an'
blessed fountain an' drinks till I aches. Which them two days of thirst
terrorises me to sech degrees that for one plumb year tharafter, I never
meets up with water when I don't drink a quart, an' act like I'm layin'
in ag'in another parched spell.

"Or I might relate how I stops over one night from Springer on my way to