rd, said it was a dog's life, if any
one should ask me, and was about to slump mournfully off to his
shop--when his eye suddenly brightened.

"Will you look once at that poor degraded red heathen, acting like a
whirlwind over in the woodlot?"

I looked once. Pete, our Indian, was apparently the sole being on the
ranch at that moment who was honestly earning his wage. No one knows how
many more than eighty years Pete has lived; but from where we stood he
was the figure of puissant youth, rhythmically flashing his axe into
bits of wood that flew apart at its touch. Uncle Abner, beside me, had
again shrugged off the dread incubus of duty. He let himself go
restfully against the corral bars and chuckled a note of harsh derision.

"Ain't it disgusting! I bet he never saw the boss when she rode off this
A.M. Yes, sir; that poor benighted pagan must think she's still in the
house--prob'ly watching him out of the east winder this very minute."

"What's this about his brother-in-law?" I asked.

"Oh, I dunno; some silly game he tries to come the roots over folks
with. Say, he's a regular old murderer, and not an honest hair in his
head! Look at the old cheat letting on to be a good steady worker
because he thinks the boss is in the house there, keeping an eye on him.
Ain't it downright disgusting!"

Uncle Abner said this as one supremely conscious of his own virtue. He
himself was descending to no foul pretense.

"A murderer, is he?"

I opened my cigarette case to the man of probity. He took two, crumpled
the tobacco from the papers and stuffed it into his calabash pipe.

"Sure is he a murderer! A tough one, too."

The speaker moved round a corner of the barn and relaxed to a sitting
posture on the platform of the pump. It brought him into the sun; but it
also brought him where he could see far down the road upon which his
returning employer would eventually appear. His eyes ever haunted the
far vistas of that road; otherwise he remained blissfully static.

It should perhaps be frankly admitted that Uncle Abner is not the
blacksmith of song and story and lithographed art treasure, suitable for
framing. That I have never beheld this traditional smith--the rugged,
upstanding tower of brawn with muscles like iron bands--is beside the
point. I have not looked upon all the blacksmiths in the world, and he
may exist. But Uncle Abner can't pose for him. He weighs a hundred and
twenty pounds without his hammer, is lean to scr