Muley throws his coat over the cage, and slams the whole works into the house. He follers it inside, and I sets there for a while thinking things over. The slats on Amelia’s home ain’t none too secure, so I loosens one end, and as I goes inside the bunk-house I sees Amelia trotting off toward the barn. Muley comes down after a while and sets down on the bunk. “Alfred danged near bit my finger off, and Amelia’s made her getaway, Hen,” he announces in a sad voice. “Amelia was down there on the corral fence, making faces at Chuck’s coyote pup, and she offers fight when I tries to calm her spirits. Aunt Agnes must have been a nut over ferocious animals.” “Nevertheless she was your mother’s sister, and left you all her wealth,” I chides him. “Yah! Like throwing both ends of a rope to a drownding man, and forgetting to hang on to the middle. Can’t marry for five—huh!” He gets up and stomps out of the place, and I opines that Muley’s inheritance is beginning to bear down upon his immortal soul. * * * * * The next day Hank Padden, who owns the Seven A outfit, shows up, and sets down with me in the parlor. Muley is washing up, and when Hank asks for him he yells that he’ll be out in a minute. “I’m going to make Muley an offer,” says Hank to me, confident-like. “I hears that he’s going to get married, and I needs a foreman what is a married man. Sabe? Single men ain’t got nothing to hold ’em down. I like Muley—dang his fat carcass—and I rides over here to see him.” “Uh-huh,” says I, ’cause there ain’t nothing else to say, and then Hank yells at Muley: “Come out here, you half-ton puncher! I want to talk to you about——” “Sheep dip! Sheep dip! Har, har, har!” I know it’s Alfred, but if it don’t sound like Muley I’ll eat my quirt. Same little wheeze that Muley has in his laugh. Hank comes to his feet like a shot, and glares at the half-closed door. He puts on his hat, walks straight out of the door, gets on his bronc and fogs away from the Cross J. I hears a crash in the next room, a couple of shrieks, and out comes Alfred with most of his tail feathers missing. He sails around the room a couple of times, finally hits the open door, and perches on the hitch-rack in front of the house. Muley comes out, with a shotgun in his hand, and glares around. “Natural lifetime, Muley,” I informs him, and he tosses the gun on the sofa. “That bird will be the death of me, Henry!” he wails, “yelping sheep-talk at Hank Padden is like lighting a cigaret with a stick of dynamite. What did he want of me?” “He came over to sympathize with you about your aunt.” “Oh!” says Muley, blank-like, looking out of the window. “Ain’t this Wick Smith coming?” It was Wick. He ties his bronc and comes inside. To hear him talk you’d think that rheumatism had typhoid-pneumonia and bubonic plague beat so far that you could cure ’em both with internal applications of peach pie.