man about his trip
into Death Valley and how he just did get out by a scratch.

So he didn't pay any attention to the goats until he went back after some
cold water for the white little woman in the car, that looked all tuckered
out and scared. It was then he found the whole corner chewed off one water
bag and the other water bag on the ground and a lot more than the corner
gone. And the billy was up on his hind feet with his horns caught in the
fullest barrel, and was snorting and snuffling in a drowning condition and
tilting the barrel perilously. The other goats were acting just like plain
damn goats, said Casey, and merely looking for trouble without having
found any.

Casey says he had to call the Oasis man to help him get Billy out of the
barrel, and that even then he had to borrow a saw and saw off one horn--
either that, or cave in the barrel with Maud--and he needed that barrel
worse than the billy goat needed two horns; but he told me that if he'd
had Maud in his two hands just then he sure would have caved in the goat.

At that, the nervous man got away without paying Casey, which I think
rankled worse than a spoiled barrel of water.

Casey told me that he aged ten years in the next two weeks, and lost
eighty-nine dollars and a half in damages and wages, not counting the two
water bags he had to replace out of his stock, at nearly four dollars
wholesale price. When he chased the goats out of his back door they went
around and came in at the front, determined, he supposed, to bed down near
the truck.

It was late before that occurred to him, and when it did he cranked up and
drove the truck a hundred yards down the road that led to the spring. The
goats did not follow as he expected, but stood around the trailer and
blatted. Casey went back and hooked on the trailer and drove again down
the road. The goats would not follow, and he went back to find that Billy
had managed to push open the back door and had led his flock into Casey's
kitchen. There was no kitchen left but the little camp stove, and that was
bent so that it stood skew-gee, Casey said, and developed a habit of
toppling over just when his coffee came to a boil.

Casey told me that he had to barricade himself in his garage that night,
and he swore that Billy stood on his hind feet and stared at him all night
through the window in spite of wrenches and pliers hailing out upon him.
However that may be, Billy couldn't have stood there all night, u