ss. It is no meal to
linger over. We grimly rise from the wrecked table and clatter out.

Only one of us--that matchless optimist, Sandy Sawtelle--sounds a flat
note in the symphony of disillusion. His humanness rebounds more quickly
than ours, who will not fawn upon life for twenty minutes yet. Sandy
comes back to the table from the hook whence he had lifted his hat. He
holds aloft a solitary hot cake and addresses Lew Wee in his best
Anglo-Chinese, and with humorous intent:

"I think take-um hot cake, nail over big knot hole in bunk-house--last
damn long time better than sheet iron!"

Swiftly departing pessimists accord no praise or attention to this
ill-timed sketch; least of all Lew Wee, who it is meant to insult.
His face retains the sad impassivity of a granite cliff as yet beyond
the dawn.

Now I am out by the saddle rack under the poplars, where two horses
are tied. Ma Pettengill's long-barrelled roan is saddled. My own
flea-bitten gray, Dandy Jim, is clad only in the rope by which he was
led up from the caviata. I approach him with the respectful attention
his reputed character merits and try to ascertain his mood of the
moment. He is a middle-aged horse, apparently of sterling character,
and in my presence has always conducted himself as a horse should. But
the shadow of scandal has been flung athwart him. I have been assured
that he has a hideous genius for cinch binding. Listening at first
without proper alarm, it has been disclosed to me that a cinch binder
ain't any joke, by a darned sight! A cinch binder will stand up straight
and lean over backward on me. If I'm there when he hits the ground I'll
wish I wasn't--if I am able to wish anything at all and don't simply have
to be shipped off to wherever my family wants it to take place.

I am further enlightened: Dandy Jim ain't so likely to start acting if
not saddled when too cold. If I saddle him then he will be expecting to
have more fun out of it than I have any right to. But if the sun is well
up, why, sometimes a baby could handle him. So for three weeks I have
saddled Dandy Jim with the utmost circumspection and with the sun well
up. Now the sun is not well up. Shall I still survive? I pause to wish
that the range of high hills on the east may be instantly levelled. The
land will then be worth something and the sun will be farther up. But
nothing of a topographical nature ensues. The hills remain to obscure the
sun. And the brute has to be saddle