I sat up with groans.  I hated to leave the hammock.

“The trout also sang it,” I reminded myself.  Followed the voice, a voice from the stable, the cracked, whining tenor of a very aged vassal of the Arrowhead, one Jimmie Time.  Jimmie, I gathered, was currying a horse as he sang, for each bar of the ballad was measured by the double thud of a currycomb against the side of a stall.  Whistle, guitar, and voice now attacked the thing in differing keys and at varying points.  Jimmie might be said to prevail.  There was a fatuous tenderness in his attack and the thudding currycomb gave it spirit.  Nor did he slur any of the affecting words; they clave the air with an unctuous precision: 

    The ow-wurs I spu-hend with thu-hee, dee-yur heart,
          (The currycomb:  Thud, thud!)
    Are as a stru-hing of pur-rulls tuh me-e-e,
          (The currycomb:  Thud, thud!)

Came a dramatic and equally soulful interpolation:  “Whoa, dang you!  You would, would you?  Whoa-a-a, now!”

Again the melody: 

    I count them o-vurr, ev-ry one apar-rut,
    (Thud, thud!)
    My ro-sah-ree—­my ro-sah-ree! 
    (Thud, thud!)

Buck Devine still mouthed his woful whistle and Sandy Sawtelle valiantly strove for the true and just accord of his six strings.  It was no place for a passive soul.  I parted swiftly from the hammock and made over the sun-scorched turf for the ranch house.  There was shelter and surcease; doors and windows might be closed.  The unctuous whine of Jimmie Time pursued me: 

    Each ow-wur a pur-rull, each pur-rull a prayer,
    (Thud, thud!)
    Tuh stu-hill a heart in absence wru-hung,
    (Thud, thud!)

As I reached the hospitable door of the living-room I observed Lew Wee, Chinese chef of the Arrowhead, engaged in cranking one of those devices with a musical intention which I have somewhere seen advertised.  It is an important-looking device in a polished mahogany case, and I recall in the advertisement I saw it was surrounded by a numerous enthralled-looking family in a costly drawing-room, while the ghost of Beethoven simpered above it in ineffable benignancy.  Something now told me the worst, even as Lew Wee adjusted the needle to the revolving disk.  I waited for no more than the opening orchestral strains.  It is a leisurely rhythmed cacophony, and I had time to be almost beyond range ere the voice took up a tale I was hearing too often in one day.  Even so I distantly perceived it to be a fruity contralto voice with an expert sob.

A hundred yards in front of the ranch house all was holy peace, peace in the stilled air, peace dreaming along the neighbouring hills and lying like a benediction over the wide river-flat below me, through which the stream wove a shining course.  I exulted in it, from the dangers passed.  Then appeared Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill from the fringe of cottonwoods, jolting a tired horse toward me over the flat.