ake of light a dulled sun was leaving as it
slipped over the sagging rim of Arrowhead Pass. And yet, through my
absorption with the shadows that now played far off among the folded
hills, there did come sharply the impression that this Sawtelle person
was dwelling too insistently upon the precise number of stitches
required by the breach in Jerry's hide.

"Fourteen--yes, ma'am; fourteen stitches. That there Alice mule sure
needs handling. Fourteen regular ones. I'd certainly show her where to
head in at, like now she was my personal property. Me, I'd abuse her
shamefully. Only eleven I took last time in poor old Jerry; and here now
it's plumb fourteen--yes, ma'am; fourteen good ones. Say, you get
fourteen of them stitches in your hide, and I bet--thought, at first, I
could make twelve do, but it takes full fourteen, with old Jerry nearly
tearing the chute down while I was taking these fourteen--"

I began to see numbers black against that glowing panorama in the west.
A monstrous 14 repeated itself stubbornly along the gorgeous reach of
it.

"Yes, ma'am--fourteen; you can go out right now and count 'em yourself.
And like mebbe I'll have to go down to town to-morrow for some more of
that King of Pain Liniment, on account of Lazarus and Bryan getting good
and lamed in this same mix-up, and me letting fall the last bottle we
had on the place and busting her wide open--"

"Don't you bother to bust any more!" broke in his employer in a tone
that I found crisp with warning. "There's a whole new case of King of
Pain in the storeroom."

"Huh!" exclaimed the surgeon, ably conveying disappointment thereby.
"And like now if I did go down I could get the new parts for that there
mower--"

"That's something for me to worry about exclusively. I'll begin when we
got something to mow." There was finished coldness in this.

"Huh!" The primitive vocable now conveyed a lively resentment, but
there was the pleading of a patient sufferer in what followed. "And like
at the same time, having to make the trip anyway for these here supplies
and things, I could stop just a minute at Doc Martingale's and have this
old tooth of mine took out, that's been achin' like a knife stuck in me
fur the last fourteen--well, fur about a week now--achin' night and
day--no sleep at all now fur seven, eight nights; so painful I get
regular delirious, let me tell you. And, of course, all wore out the way
I am, I won't be any good on the place till my ago