“I hardly know--pure cussedness, I guess. Nothing worth quarreling about. Tommy Garst and one of our boys had some words about some spring up in the mountains. All foolishness--nobody had any real title to it and everybody’s cattle watered there; so it made no difference who claimed it. But they got to shooting over it--silly fools! Both gone now.” “Nobody hurt?” “Dah!” said Ducky scornfully. “Well, how about that answer?” Neighbor looked at his own toes with painstaking speculative interest. To assist the process he cocked his head on one side and screwed his mouth up. At last he glanced over at Ducky. “I know a lot if I could only think of it,” he announced plaintively. With a thoughtful face and apparently without his own knowledge, he broke into song, with a gay, lilting voice: “_Here I am, a-comin’ on the run-- Best durn cowboy ’at ever pulled a gun! Hi-yi-yi-yippy; yippy-yi-yi-yi! Hi-yi-yi-yippy; yippy-yea!_” Ducky sniffed. “Why don’t you learn a tune if you want to sing?” Neighbor looked round with puckered eyes. “Why, I ain’t singin’--not exactly!” he answered dreamily. “I’m thinkin’--thinkin’ about your troubles and how to make ’em all come out right in the next number. I’ve got a two-story mind, you see. One of ’em is diggin’ away for you, hard, while the other one is singin’, foot-loose, or talking to you. Me and the real serious-mind, we’re studyin’ right now; we don’t hardly sense what I’m sayin’ to you. And that’s a real nice tune too. I don’t like to have you make fun of that tune. That’s a saddle song. That tune goes to a trotting horse. You try it.” “Why, so it does!” said Ducky after a brief experiment. “Can you make your fingers go gallop-y? Well, do it, and I’ll show you another. But don’t talk to me. I’m thinking fine and close, like walkin’ a rope; and you’ll throw me off.” So Ducky made his fingers go gallop-y and Neighbor kept time to it: “_Percival Pulcifer Peterkin Pool, Cloaked and mittened and ready for school; Cloaked and muffled and gloved and spurred. Gee! Wasn’t Peter a wise old bird?_” “Any more?” demanded Ducky, highly diverted. “Yes; here’s a pacing tune. They say,” added Neighbor absently, “they say, back in Maryland and Virginia, that old King James Fifth wrote this song--allowing for some expurgating and change o’ names--Albuquerque for Edinburgh--to give it local color. Hark! “_Oh, when I got to Albuquerque I taken down my sign-- Tirra-la-la, tirra-la-la, lay! Oh, when I gat to Albuquerque I taken down my sign, For they’re all educated there in the riding line-- Ti-ri-laddy and a ti-ri-lay!_” Here Neighbor brought his tilted chair back to level, removed his clasped hands from the back of his head, and shook off his dreamy expression. “Well, I guess I’ll have to give it up for this time,” he sighed.