The Happy Family | Page 2

I'd call raw." He decided that a little
more hammering right next the rowel was necessary, and bent over the
anvil solicitously. Even the self-complacency of Sherwood Branciforte
could not fail to note his utter indifference to the presence and opinions
of his companion. Branciforte was accustomed to disputation at
times--even to enmity; but not to indifference. He blinked. "My dear
fellow, do you realize what it is that statement might seem to imply?"
he queried haughtily.
Andy, being a cowpuncher of the brand known as a "real," objected
strongly both to the term and the tone. He stood up and stared down at
the other disapprovingly. "I don't as a general thing find myself guilty
of talking in my sleep," he retorted, "and I'm prepared to let anything I
say stand till the next throw. We may be some vociferous, out here
twixt the Mississippi and the Rockies, but we ain't no
infant-in-the-cradle, Mister. We had civilization here when the Pilgrim
Fathers' rock wasn't nothing but a pebble to let fly at the birds!"
"Indeed!" fleered Sherwood Branciforte, in a voice which gave much
intangible insult to one's intelligence.
Andy clicked his teeth together, which was a symptom it were well for
the other to recognize but did not. Then Andy smiled, which was
another symptom. He fingered the spur absently, laid it down and
reached, with the gesture that betrays the act as having become second
nature, for his papers and tobacco sack.
"Uh course, you mean all right, and you ain't none to blame for what
you don't know, but you're talking wild and scattering. When you stand
up and tell me I can't point to nothing man-made that's fifty years old,
or a hundred, you make me feel sorry for yuh. I can take you to
something--or I've seen something--that's older than swearing; and I
reckon that art goes back to when men wore their hair long and a
sheep-pelt was called ample for dress occasions."
"Are you crazy, man?" Sherwood Branciforte exclaimed incredulously.
"Not what you can notice. You wait whilst I explain. Once last fall I
was riding by my high lonesome away down next the river, when my
horse went lame on me from slipping on a shale bank, and I was set
afoot. Uh course, you being plumb ignorant of our picturesque life, you

don't half know all that might signify to imply." This last in open
imitation of Branciforte. "It implies that I was in one hell of a fix, to put
it elegant. I was sixty miles from anywhere, and them sixty half the
time standing on end and lapping over on themselves. That there is
down where old mama Nature gave full swing to a morbid hankering
after doing things unconventional. Result is, that it's about as ungodly a
mixture of nightmare scenery as this old world can show up; and I've
ambled around considerable and am in a position to pass judgment.
"So there I was, and I wasn't in no mood to view the beauties uh nature
to speak of; for instance, I didn't admire the clouds sailing around
promiscous in the sky, nor anything like that. I was high and dry and
the walking was about as poor as I ever seen; and my boots was
high-heel and rubbed blisters before I'd covered a mile of that acrobatic
territory. I wanted water, and I wanted it bad. Before I got it I wanted it
a heap worse." He stopped, cupped his slim fingers around a
match-blaze, and Branciforte sat closer. He did not know what was
coming, but the manner of the indifferent narrator was compelling. He
almost forgot the point at issue in the adventure.
"Along about dark, I camped for the night under a big, bare-faced cliff
that was about as homelike and inviting as a charitable institution, and
made a bluff at sleeping and cussed my bum luck in a way that wasn't
any bluff. At sun-up I rose and mooched on." His cigarette needed
another match and he searched his pockets for one.
"What about the--whatever it was you started to tell me?" urged
Branciforte, grown impatient.
Andy looked him over calmly. "You've lived in ignorance for about
thirty years or so--giving a rough guess at your age; I reckon you can
stand another five minutes. As I was saying, I wandered around like a
dogy when it's first turned loose on the range and is trying to find the
old, familiar barn-yard and the skim-milk bucket. And like the dogy, I
didn't run across anything that looked natural or inviting. All that day I
perambulated over them hills, and I will say I wasn't enjoying the stroll
none. You're right when you say things can happen, out here. There's
some things it's