Anyway, we didn't know that Frank had returned home and we were so wrapped up in our target practice that we didn't see him until he was right upon us. Then it was too late to run. And for one time in my life I couldn't think of anything to say. We just stood there in surprise, prepared for the worst. Then we got a bigger surprise. Frank walked up to us and said, "There are plenty of shells in the bottom of my trunk when you run out." And with that, he gave us a few pointers on firing a pistol and walked away. Before Papa got his freight line from Hamlin to Stamford, he had one truck and was looking for anything to haul that would help us make a living. He took one job of hauling that shouldn't happen to a dog. There was a man buying maize heads one summer and shipping them by rail to somewhere. This was the surplus maize farmers had left from last year's crop, after they had used all they needed for feed through the winter and spring. The man bought the maize from farmers and then told us where to go pick it up. Then we hauled it from the farms and loaded it into railroad boxcars. You may not know it, but each and every maize seed has a little stinger on it. These stingers are bad enough when you get the heads out of the field in the fall and fork them into a storage bin. In the fall you are working most of the time out in the open air. But when that feed lies in storage all winter, it dries out month after month and it collects dust from West Texas weather and from the grains themselves where mice, rats, and birds have eaten, slept and roosted. And then, when you load it into a truck, you have to get in the storage bin, under a sheet metal roof, with a blazing sun bearing down on the roof. And each little stinger on each grain is harder and more brittle than it was in the fall, and all these stingers break off the seeds more easily, more of them mix in with the dust, and they get into your eyes, your nose, down your collar and lodge in the wrinkles of your stomach, and they get in under your arms and around the tops of your shoes and they dig into your ankles. Eventually, there is not any place on your body that doesn't sting and itch. What's more, the stinging and itching goes on after a bath. Now I believe you will agree with me--it shouldn't happen to a dog. When you have a job like that, you hate it, you detest it, and you dread having to face it the next day. But you do it, and you keep on doing it until the job is finished, because you like to eat, and the job pays money and you have to earn money in order to eat.