e song with a desperate intentness. That song was
"The Rosary." The fish had presumed too far. "This," I shrewdly told
myself, "is almost certainly a dream." The soundless words were magic.
Gorge and stream vanished, the versatile fish faded to blue sky showing
through the green needles of a jack pine. It was a sane world again and
still, I thought, with the shadows of ranch house, stable, hay barn,
corral, and bunk house going long to the east. I stretched in the
hammock, I tingled with a lazy well-being. The world was still; but was
it--quite?

On a bench over by the corral gate crouched Buck Devine, doing something
needful to a saddle. And as he wrought he whistled. He whistled "The
Rosary" shrilly and with much feeling. Nor was the world still but for
this. From the bunk house came the mellow throbbing of a stringed
instrument, the guitar of Sandy Sawtelle, star rider of the Arrowhead,
temporarily withdrawn from a career of sprightly endeavour by a sprained
ankle and solacing his retirement with music. He was playing "The
Rosary"--very badly indeed, but one knew only too well what he meant.
The two performers were distant enough to be no affront to each other.
The hammock, less happily, was midway between them.

I sat up with groans. I hated to leave the hammock.

"The trout also sang it," I reminded myself. Followed the voice, a voice
from the stable, the cracked, whining tenor of a very aged vassal of the
Arrowhead, one Jimmie Time. Jimmie, I gathered, was currying a horse as
he sang, for each bar of the ballad was measured by the double thud of a
currycomb against the side of a stall. Whistle, guitar, and voice now
attacked the thing in differing keys and at varying points. Jimmie might
be said to prevail. There was a fatuous tenderness in his attack and the
thudding currycomb gave it spirit. Nor did he slur any of the affecting
words; they clave the air with an unctuous precision:

The ow-wurs I spu-hend with thu-hee, dee-yur heart,
(The currycomb: Thud, thud!)
Are as a stru-hing of pur-rulls tuh me-e-e,
(The currycomb: Thud, thud!)

Came a dramatic and equally soulful interpolation: "Whoa, dang you! You
would, would you? Whoa-a-a, now!"

Again the melody:

I count them o-vurr, ev-ry one apar-rut,
(Thud, thud!)
My ro-sah-ree--my ro-sah-ree!
(Thud, thud!)

Buck Devine still mouthed his woful whistle and Sandy Sawtelle valiantly
strove for the true and just a