n his way, but was safe from pilfering
fingers. It was not such a bad truck, give it new tires. Casey had already
figured the price at which he could probably sell it, on an easy payment
plan, to the man who hauled water for Patmos. It was more than the amount
of his loan, naturally. By noon he was rather hoping the "Smith Bros."
would fail to take up that note.

Casey, you see, was not counting the goats at all. He had a vague idea
that, while they were nominally a part of the security, they were actually
of no importance whatever. They would run loose until Smith came after
them, he guessed. He did not intend to milk any nanny goats, so that
settled the goat question for Casey.

Casey simply did not know anything about goats. He ought to have used a
little logic and not so much happy-go-lucky "t'ell with the goats." That
is all very well, so far as it goes, and we all know that everybody says
it and thinks it. But it does, not settle the problem. It never occurred
to Casey, for instance, that the going of Humbolt and Greeley and the
little spotted dog would make any difference. It really did make a great
deal, you see. And it never occurred to Casey that goats are domesticated
animals after they have been hauled around the country for weeks and weeks
in a trailer to a truck, or that they will come back to the only home they
know.

I don't know how long it takes goats to fill up. I never kept a goat or
goats. And I don't know how long they will stand around and blat before
they start something. I don't know much more about goats than Casey, or
didn't, at least, until he told me. By that time Casey knew a lot more, I
suspect, than he could put into words.

Casey says that he heard them blatting around outside, but he was busy
trying to straighten a radius rod--Casey _said_ he was taking the kinks
outa that hootin'-annie that goes behind the front ex and turns the
dingbats when you steer--for a man who walked back and forth and slapped
his hands together nervously and kept asking how long it was going to
take, and how far it was to Barstow, and whether the road from there up
across the Mojave was in good condition, and whether the Death Valley road
out from Ludlow went clear through the valley and was a cut-off north, or
whether it just went into the valley and stopped. Casey says that the only
time he ever was in Death Valley it was with a couple of burros and that
he like to have stayed there. He got to telling the