. He lost fifteen pounds of flesh and every friend
he had made in the place except the man who hauled water, and he liked it
because he was getting rich. Once Casey had a bright idea, and with much
labor and language he loaded the goats into the trailer and had the
water-hauler take them out to the hills. But that didn't work at all. Part
of the flock came back afoot, from sheer homesickness, and the rest were
hauled back because they were ruining the spring which was Patmos' sole
water supply.

Casey would have shot the goats, but he couldn't bring himself to do
anything that would offend J. Paul Smith of the _Vista Grande Rancho._
Whenever he read the letter J. Paul Smith had written him he was ashamed
to do anything that would lower him in the estimation of J. Paul Smith,
who trusted him and took it for granted that he would do the right thing
and do it with enthusiasm.

"If he hadn't wrote so dog-gone polite!" Casey complained to me. "And if
he hadn't went an' took it for granted I'd come through. But a man can't
turn down a feller that wrote the way he done. Look at that letter! A
college perfessor couldn't uh throwed together no better letter than that.
And that there 'Thanking you in advance'--a feller _can't_ throw a man
down when he writes that way. You ask anybody." Casey's tone was one of
reminiscent injury, as if J. Paul Smith had indeed taken a mean advantage
of him.

One day Casey reached the limit of his endurance,--or perhaps of the
endurance of Patmos. There were not enough male residents to form a mob
strong enough to lynch Casey, but there was one woman who had lost a sofa
pillow and two lace curtains; Casey did not say much about her, but I
gathered that he would as soon be lynched as remonstrated with again by
that woman. "Sufferin' Sunday! I'd shore hate to be her husband. You ask
anybody!" sighed Casey when he was telling me.

Casey moralized a little. "Folks used to look at the goats that I'd maybe
just hazed off into the brush fifty yards or so with a thousand pounds
mebby of rocks, an' some woman in goggles would say, 'Oh, an' you keep
goats! How nice!' like as if it were something peaceful an' homelike to
keep goats! Hunh! Lemme tell yuh; never drive past a place that _looks_
peaceful, and jump at the idea it _is_ peaceful. They may be a woman
behind them vines poisinin' 'er husband's father. How could them darn
tourists tell'what was goin' on in Patmos? They seen the goats pertendin'
to g