Telescope is built like a bed-slat, and orates openly that he’s a twig of the Tolliver tree, which flourished and bought colored help in Kentucky before the plans were drawn for the pyramids. Chuck Warner don’t claim nothing, and don’t get sore if you subtract from his ancestry. He was born west of the Arizona line, and if he descended from anybody it was Ananias. Chuck’s legs are as short as his memory, and he was born with the face of a horse and the trusting eyes of an angel. He never told the truth but once. A big feller, from down below Mesquite, took him down and bumped his head on the ground. “You got enough?” asks the big person, and Chuck howls— “Plenty!” “You ain’t lying, are you?” asks the feller, after he lets Chuck up. Chuck brushes off his clothes and shakes his sore head: “No! Dang it all! I wasn’t in no position to lie about it!” * * * * * Muley told me that I couldn’t keep a secret, and I didn’t. Me and Chuck and Telescope rides to town that afternoon, to foller out the usual program expected of punchers with a month’s pay aboard, and I tells them about Muley’s troubles. “He’s more to be censured than pitied,” admits Chuck. “I don’t blame Zeb, but I do hate a shepherd what thinks a puncher ain’t good enough for his relatives.” “Poor Muley,” says Telescope, sad-like, “any man what is just one aunt shy of being an orphan has my sympathy. I’ll promise you, Hen, that I’ll do all I can.” “In Muley’s name I thanks you,” says I, “but if you can’t do it for Muley don’t do it on my account. I ain’t going to marry her. I just feel sorry for him. I’d feel sorry for anybody what was in love with Susie.” “She ain’t exactly of the vampire type,” agrees Chuck. “Muley’s got one dead immortal cinch though: nobody’s going to come along and steal her away from him.” “Zeb says he’ll have to marry her over his dead body or bring money enough to buy out his sheep,” says I. “The latter is the more revolting,” says Telescope. “Tell Muley we’ll fix it for him after we get back if we have to steal Zeb’s sheep so he won’t have nothing to sell.” The next few days we’re a busy crew, loading twenty cars of beef for Chicago, and we don’t have much time for conversation. Muley is too fat to herd ’em up the chute, so he sets down cross-legged on top of a car, and checks off the loads. Zeb Abernathy comes over to the yards and sets down on top of the fence, along with a lot of other loafers, and when Telescope sees him he crosses the corral and sets down beside Zeb. “Howdy, Zeb,” says Telescope, rolling a smoke. “You going to leave here after you sells out, or are you going to make your home with Susie and her husband?” “Hu-u-u-u-h?” grunts Zeb, amazed-like, “what’s that you said?” “Haw, haw, haw!” laughed Telescope, slapping Zeb on the back. “You can’t keep things like that a secret around here, old-timer. What’ll we bring to the charivari—sheep-shears or tin cans?”