like as not kept in at
recess."

"You ought to seen that bunch of tame alligators down to the San
Francisco Fair," observed Squat genially. "The old boy that had 'em says
'Oh, yes, they would make fine pets, and don't I want a couple for ten
dollars to take home to the little ones?' But I don't. You come right
down to household pets--I ruther have me a white rabbit or a canary bird
than an alligator you could step on in the dark some night and get all
bit up, and mebbe blood poison set in."

"I recollect same as if it was yesterday," began Uncle Abner quickly.
"We was coming up through northern Arizona one fall, with a bunch of
longhorns and we make this here water hole about four P.M.--or mebbe a
mite after that or a little before; but, anyway, I says to Jeff Bradley,
'Jeff,' I says to him, 'it looks to me almighty like--'"

Sandy Sawtelle savagely demanded a cup of coffee, gulped it heroically,
rose in a virtuous hurry, and at the door wondered loudly if he was
leaving a bunch of rich millionaires that had nothing to do but loaf in
their club all the afternoon and lie their heads off, or just a passell
of lazy no-good cowhands that laid down on the job the minute the boss
stepped off the place. Whereupon, it being felt that the rabid
anecdotist had been sufficiently rebuked, we all went out to help the
veterinary look at Adolph for twenty minutes more.

Adolph is four years old and weighs one ton. He has a frowning and
fearsome front and the spirit of a friendly puppy. The Arrowhead force
loafed about in the corral and imparted of its own lore to the
veterinary while he took Adolph's temperature. Then Adolph, after nosing
three of the men to have his head rubbed, went to stand in the
rush-grown pool at the far end of the corral, which the gallery took to
mean that he still had a bit of fever, no matter what the glass thing
said.

The veterinary opposed a masterly silence to this majority diagnosis,
and in the absence of argument about it there seemed nothing left for
the Arrowhead retainers but the toil for which they were paid. They went
to it lingeringly, one by one, seeming to feel that perhaps they wronged
the ailing Adolph by not staying there to talk him over.

Uncle Abner, who is the Arrowhead blacksmith, was the last to leave--or
think of leaving--though he had mule shoes to shape and many mules to
shoe. He glanced wistfully again at Adolph, in cool water to his knees,
tugged at his yellowish-white bea