ith a barrel of water, even if it does cost fifty
cents. Casey told Juan to go borrow a tub next door and show the man where
the water barrel stood. Juan, squatted on his heels while he languidly
pumped the jack handle up and down, and seeming pleased than otherwise
when the jack slipped and tilted so that he must lower it and begin all
over again, got languidly to his bare feet and lounged off obediently.
According to Juan's simple philosophy, to obey was better than to dodge
hammers, pliers or monkey wrenches, since Casey's aim was direct and there
was usually considerable force of hard, prospector's muscle behind it.

Juan was gone a long while, long enough to walk slowly to the station of
Patmos and back again, but he returned with the tub, and the incessant
bleating of the goats stilled intermittently while they drank. By this
time Casey had forgotten the goats, even with the noise of them filling
his ears.

Casey was down on his knees hammering dents out of the rim of a front
wheel so that the new tire could go on. Four of the six offspring crowded
around him, getting in the way of Casey's hammer and asking questions
which no man could answer and remain normal. Casey had, while he unwrapped
the casings, made a mental reduction in the price. Even Bill would throw
off a little, he told himself, on a sale like this. Mentally he had
deducted twenty-five dollars from the grand total, but before he had that
rim straightened he said to himself that he'd be darned if he discounted
more than twenty.

"Humbolt an' Greeley, you git away from there an' git out here an' git
these goats a-grazin'," the lean customer called sharply from the rear of
the garage. Humbolt and Greeley hastily proceeded to git, which left two
unkempt young girls standing there at Casey's elbow so that he could not
expectorate where he pleased, or swear at all. Wherefore Casey was
appreciably handicapped in his work, and he wished that he were away out
in the hills digging into the side of a gulch somewhere, sun-blistered,
broke, more than half starving on short rations and with rheumatism in his
right shoulder and a bunion giving him a limp in the left foot. He could
still be happy--

"_What_ yuh doin' that for?" the shrillest voice repeated three times
rapidly, with a sniffle now and then by way of punctuation.

"To make little girls ask questions," grunted Casey, glancing around him
for the snub-nosed, double-headed, four-pound hammer which he c