“I recollect same as if it was yesterday,” began Uncle Abner quickly.  “We was coming up through northern Arizona one fall, with a bunch of longhorns and we make this here water hole about four P.M.—­or mebbe a mite after that or a little before; but, anyway, I says to Jeff Bradley, ‘Jeff,’ I says to him, ‘it looks to me almighty like—­’”

Sandy Sawtelle savagely demanded a cup of coffee, gulped it heroically, rose in a virtuous hurry, and at the door wondered loudly if he was leaving a bunch of rich millionaires that had nothing to do but loaf in their club all the afternoon and lie their heads off, or just a passell of lazy no-good cowhands that laid down on the job the minute the boss stepped off the place.  Whereupon, it being felt that the rabid anecdotist had been sufficiently rebuked, we all went out to help the veterinary look at Adolph for twenty minutes more.

Adolph is four years old and weighs one ton.  He has a frowning and fearsome front and the spirit of a friendly puppy.  The Arrowhead force loafed about in the corral and imparted of its own lore to the veterinary while he took Adolph’s temperature.  Then Adolph, after nosing three of the men to have his head rubbed, went to stand in the rush-grown pool at the far end of the corral, which the gallery took to mean that he still had a bit of fever, no matter what the glass thing said.

The veterinary opposed a masterly silence to this majority diagnosis, and in the absence of argument about it there seemed nothing left for the Arrowhead retainers but the toil for which they were paid.  They went to it lingeringly, one by one, seeming to feel that perhaps they wronged the ailing Adolph by not staying there to talk him over.

Uncle Abner, who is the Arrowhead blacksmith, was the last to leave—­or think of leaving—­though he had mule shoes to shape and many mules to shoe.  He glanced wistfully again at Adolph, in cool water to his knees, tugged at his yellowish-white beard, said it was a dog’s life, if any one should ask me, and was about to slump mournfully off to his shop—­when his eye suddenly brightened.

“Will you look once at that poor degraded red heathen, acting like a whirlwind over in the woodlot?”

I looked once.  Pete, our Indian, was apparently the sole being on the ranch at that moment who was honestly earning his wage.  No one knows how many more than eighty years Pete has lived; but from where we stood he was the figure of puissant youth, rhythmically flashing his axe into bits of wood that flew apart at its touch.  Uncle Abner, beside me, had again shrugged off the dread incubus of duty.  He let himself go restfully against the corral bars and chuckled a note of harsh derision.

“Ain’t it disgusting!  I bet he never saw the boss when she rode off this A.M.  Yes, sir; that poor benighted pagan must think she’s still in the house—­prob’ly watching him out of the east winder this very minute.”