awin' ten
extry from day before yestiday. I reckon the stockholders can stand
that."

"That'll make it about break even," Curly answered simply.

"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, "if either of them twins should need any
drugs--"

"Drugs!" snorted Dan Anderson. "What would they want with drugs?
After they've run around in here for two weeks, you couldn't kill 'em
with an axe. If the coyotes don't catch 'em, there's nothing else can
happen to 'em."

"I'll give you about eight dollars for the green canary, Tom," said Doc
Tomlinson. "I want to hang him in my store."

"But I want to hang him in my wagon," objected Tom Osby. "He's
company. You fellers plumb rob me every time I come to town." His
voice was plaintive.

"The court rules," observed Dan Anderson, judicially, "that the parrot
goes with the twins." And it was finally so decided by the referendum.
Whereupon Tom Osby, grumbling and bewailing his hard lot as common
carrier, drove off with Curly across the _arroyo_ in search of a new
mother for the twins.

The Littlest Girl, Curly's wife, read the letter which Tom offered.
Tears sprang to her eyes; and then, as might have been expected of the
Littlest Girl, she reached up her arms to the homeless waifs, who stood
at the wagon front, each clasping a stubby forefinger of Tom Osby's
hand.

"Babies!" cried she. "You poor little babies! Oh!" And so she
gathered them to her breast and bore them away, even though a curly
head over each shoulder gazed back longingly at the gnarled freighter
on his wagon seat. Tom Osby picked up his reins and drove back across
the _arroyo_. Thus, without unbecoming ostentation, Heart's Desire
became possessed of certain features never before known in its history.

Within a few weeks the parrot and the twins had so firmly established
themselves in the social system of the place as to become matters of
regular conversation. Curly never appeared at the forum of Whiteman's
corral without finding himself the recipient of many queries.

"Why, them twins," he replied one day, "they're in full charge of the
_rodeo_. They've got me and the woman hobbled, hitched, and
side-lined for keeps. Dead heat between them and Bill, the parrot.
They're in on all the plays together. Wherever they go, he's right
after 'em, and he night-and-day-herds 'em closer'n a Mexican shepherd
dog does a bunch of sheep. Now, I blew in last night, intoe their
room, and there was old Bill, settin' on the fo