of
Westfall. The Bay Eagle was watching the steers, and Ump was sitting
sidewise in his saddle with his hands around his knees.

I hailed him. "Did you have a hard job?"

"Easy as rollin' off a log," he answered. "I thought King David would
throw his coat, but he was smooth-mouthed an' cross-legged as a
peddler."

"Did Twiggs get in?" I asked.

"Beat me by a neck," answered the hunchback. "But I passed him comin'
out an' I lit in to him."

"Fist and skull?" said I.

"Jaw," said he. "I damned every Carper into fiddlestrings from old Adam
to old Columbus."

"What did he say?"

"He said we was the purtiest bunch of idiots in the kingdom of
cowtails."

CHAPTER XIV

RELATING TO THE FIRST LIARS

The autumn in the Hills is but the afternoon of summer. The hour of the
new guest is not yet. Still the heat lies on the earth and runs bubbling
in the water. The little maid trots barefoot and the urchin goes
a-swimming in the elm-hole by the corner of the meadow. Still the tender
grass grows at the roots of the dead crop, and the little purple flowers
dimple naked in the brown pasture. Still that Pied Piper of Hamelin, the
everlasting Pan, flutes in the deep hollows, squatted down in the
broom-sedge. And still the world is a land of unending summer, of
unfading flowers, of undying youthfulness. Only for an hour or so, far
in the deep night does the distant breath of the Frost King come to
haunt the land, and then when the sun flings away his white samite
coverlid it is summer again, with the earth shining and the water warm.

It was hot mid-morning when the long drove trailed down toward Horton's
Ferry. The sweat was beginning to trickle in the hair of the fat cattle.
Here and there through the herd a quarrelsome fellow was beginning to
show the effect of his fighting and the heat. His eyes were a bit watery
in his dusty face, and the tip of his tongue was slipping at his lips.
The warm sun was getting into the backs of us all. I had stripped off my
coat and carried it thrown across the horn of the saddle. Ump rode a
mile away in the far front of the drove, keeping a few steers moving in
the lead, while Jud shifted his horse up and down the long line. I
followed on El Mahdi, lolling in the big saddle. Far away, I could hear
Ump shout at some perverse steer climbing up against the high road bank,
or the crack of Jud's driving whip drifted back to me. The lagging
bullocks settled to the rear, and El Mahdi held