He refilled the water bags and remarked pointedly that it would take an hour for the water to cool in them and that they must be left alone in the meantime.  He did not look at the girl, but from the tail of his eye he saw her pull a contemptuous grimace at him when she thought his back safely turned.

Wherefore Casey finished the putting on of the fourth tire pretty well up toward the boiling point in temper and in blood.  I have not mentioned half the disagreeable trifles that nagged at him during the interval,—­his audience, for instance, that hovered so close that he could not get up without colliding with one of them, so full of aimless talk that he mislaid tools in his distraction.  Juan was a pest and Casey thought malevolently how he would kill him when the job was finished.  Juan went around like one in a trance, his heavy-lidded, opaque eyes following every movement of the girl, which kept her younger sisters giggling.  But even with interruptions and practically no assistance the truck stood at last with four good tires on its wheels, and Casey wiped a perspiring face and let down the jack, thankful that the job was done; thinking, too, that ten dollars would be a big reduction on the price.  He had to count his time, you see.

“Well, how much does it come to, mister?” the lord of the flock asked dolefully, when Casey called him in and told him that he could go at any time now.

Casey told him, and made the price only five dollars lower than the full amount, just because he hated to see men walk around loose in their pants, with their stomachs sagged in as though they never were fed a square meal in their lives.

“It’s a pile uh money to pay out for rubber that’s goin’ to be chewed off on these here danged rocks,” sighed the man.

Casey grunted and began collecting his tools, rescuing the best hammer he had from one of the girls.  “I wisht it was all profit,” he said.  “Or even a quarter of it.  I’m sellin’ ’em close as I can an’ git paid fer my time puttin’ ’em on.”

“Oh, I ain’t kickin’ about the price.  I’m satisfied with that.”  Men usually are, you notice, when they want credit.  “Now I tell yuh.  I ain’t got that much money with me—­”

Casey spat and pointed his thumb toward a sign which he had nailed up just the day before, thinking that it would save both himself and his customers some embarrassment.  The sign, except that the letters were not even, was like this: 

  “CHECKS MUST BE CASHED
  BY THE ONER
  OR THEY AIN’T CASHED”

The lean man read and looked at Casey humbly.  “Well, I ain’t never wrote a check in my life.  Now I tell yuh.  I ain’t got the money to pay for these tires, but I tell yuh what I’ll do; I’m goin’ on up to my brother—­he’s got a prune orchard a little ways out from San Jose, an’ he’s well fixed.  Now I’ll write out an order on my brother, fer him to send you the money.  He’s good fer it, an’ he’ll do it.  I’m goin’ on up to help him work his place on shares, so I c’n straighten up with him when I get—­”