“No, he ain’t, by cripes!” Big Medicine corrected him.  “That there Come-Paddy cat of yourn has got worse troubles than snow!  Dog’s got him treed up the windmill.  I seen—­”

Applehead did not wait to hear what Big Medicine had seen.  He drank the remainder of his coffee in one great, scalding gulp, and went out to rescue his cat and to put the fear of death into the little black dog.  When he returned, puffing a little, to his interrupted meal and had told them a few of the things he meant to do to that dog if it refused to mend its ways, he declared again that he could “shore smell snow behind that wind.”

“I wish it would hold off till that raw stock gets here,” Luck observed anxiously.  “I wired the order in, but at that I’m afraid it won’t get here before the end of the week.  I’ll have one of you boys pack me some water into the dark room so I can develop negatives right after dinner.  I want to see how she’s coming out before I take any more.”

“I thought Andy’d fixed a hose fer that dark room,” Happy Jack said forebodingly.  If there was water to be carried, Happy was pessimistically certain that he would have to carry it.

“I turned that hose over to the missus for a colander,” Andy explained soberly.  “By gracious, I couldn’t figure out anything else it could be used for.”

“Did you get the barrels fixed like I said?”

“I sure did.  Applehead must have had a Dutch picnic or two out here, from the number of beer kegs scattered all over the place.  And a couple of big whisky—­”

“Them there whisky bar’ls I bought and used fer water bar’ls till I got my well bored.  Luck kin mind the time when we hauled water on a sled outa the arroyo down below.”  Applehead’s eyes turned anxiously to Rosemary, toward whom he was beginning to show a timidly worshipful attitude.

“You bet I can.  Do you remember the time we hitched that big bronk up with old Wall-eye, to haul water?  Got back here a little ways beyond the stable with two barrels sloshing over the top, and the cat—­not this one, but a black-and-white cat, that was—­the cat jumped out from behind a buck brush. Hot dog! That bronk went straight in the air!  Remember that time?” Luck leaned back in his chair to laugh.

“I shore do,” Applehead chuckled.  “Luck, here, he was walkin’ behind the sled and drivin’,—­and he wasn’t as big as he is now, even.  That was soon after he come out here to fatten up like.  Little bit of a peaked—­why, I bet he didn’t weigh over a hundred pounds after a full meal!  He was ridin’ the lines an’ steadyin’ the bar’ls, busy as a dog at a badger hole, when the cat jumped out, an’ that there bronk r’ared back and swung off short and hit fur the mesa; and Luck here a-hangin’ and hollerin’, an’ me a-leggin’ it to ketch up, and bar’ls teeterin’ and—­Mind how you was bound you’d kill that cat uh mine?” he asked Luck, tears of laughter dimming his eyes.  “That was ole Leather Lungs.  He tuk sick an’ died, year after that.  Luck shore was mad enough to eat that thar cat, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”