nless
Casey got his dates mixed. For at six o'clock the Oasis man came over,
stepping high and swinging his fists, and told Casey that them damn goats
had et all the bedding out of one tent and the soap, towel and one pillow
out of another, and what was Casey going to do about it?

Casey did not know,--and he was famous for his resourcefulness too. I
think he paid for the bedding before the thing was settled.

Casey says that after that it was just one thing after another. He told me
that he never would have believed twelve goats could cover so much
cussedness in a day. He said he couldn't fill a radiator but some goat
would be chewing the baggage tied behind the car, or Billy would be
rooting suitcases off the running board. One party fell in love with a
baby goat and Casey in a moment of desperation told them they could have
it. But he was sorry afterward, because the mother stood and blatted at
him reproachfully for four days and nights without stopping.

Casey swears that he picked up and threw two tons of rocks every day, and
he has no idea how many tons the six families of Patmos heaved at and
after the goats. When they weren't going headfirst into barrels of water
they were chewing something not meant to be chewed. Casey asserts that it
is all a bluff about goats eating tin cans. They don't. He says they never
touched a can all the while he had them. He says devastated Patmos wished
they would, and leave the two-dollar lace curtains alone, and clotheslines
and water barrels and baggage. He says many a party drove off with chewed
bedding rolls and didn't know it, and that he didn't tell them, either.

You're thinking about Juan, I know. Well, Casey thought of Juan the first
day, and took the trouble to hunt him up and hire him to herd the goats.
But Juan developed a bad case of sleeping sickness, Casey says, which
unfortunately was not contagious to goats. He swears that he never saw one
of those goats lying down, though he had seen pictures of goats lying down
and had a vague idea that they chewed their cuds. Casey tried to be funny,
then. He looked at me and grinned, and observed, "Hunh! Goats don't chew
cuds. That's all wrong. They chew _duds._ You ask anybody in Patmos." So
Juan slept under sagebushes and grease-wood, and the goats did not.

Casey declares that he stood it for two weeks, and that it took all he
could make in the garage to pay the six families of Patmos for the damage
wrought by his security