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"You are speaking, sir, about a person who matters enormously," I rebuked him. "If I hadn't been afraid of getting arrested I'd have shot him long ago." "It's not done, sir," I said, quite horrified by his rash words. "It's liable to be," he insisted. "I bet Ma Pettengill will go in with me on it any time I give her the word. Say, listen! there's one good mixer." "The confirmed Mixer, sir?"
Bernard dog with a marked facial resemblance to the late William E. Gladstone, and a triumph of architectural perspective revealing two sides of the Pettengill block, corner of Fourth and Main streets, Red Gap, made vivacious by a bearded fop on horseback who doffs his silk hat to a couple of overdressed ladies with parasols in a passing victoria. And there is the photograph of the fat man.
Ma Pettengill ate somewhat, but talked also, keeping Uncle Henry and Aunt Mollie shiny with smiles. They both have polished white teeth of the most amazing regularity. I ate almost exclusively, affecting to be preoccupied about something. The time was urgent. I formed an entangling alliance with the pork tenderloin, which endured to a point where but one small fragment was left on the platter.
It was a pleasant prospect and warmed Ma Pettengill from her mood of chill negation. She remarked upon the goodliness of the scene, quite as if the present were not a technical year for cattle raisers.
Ma Pettengill said, with very questionable taste, I thought: "Oh, no; nothing like that!" because we didn't want to make the least bit of trouble. The woman is dense at times. What else had we come there for? But Aunt Mollie said, then, how about some prime young pork tenderline? And Ma Pettengill said she guessed that would do, and I said I guessed that would do. And there we were!
As I mused upon this Ma Pettengill sorted the evening mail and to Lew Wee she now took his San Francisco newspaper, Young China, and a letter. Half an hour later Lew Wee brought wood to replenish the fire. He disposed of this and absently brushed the hearth with a turkey wing.
"Pretty soon Injin got no mules, no blanket, no spring wagon, no gun, no new boots, no nine dollars my old mahala gets paid for three bushel wild plums from Old Lady Pettengill to make canned goods of only got one big sick head from all night; see four aces, four kings, four jacks. 'What you got, Pete? No good. Full house here. Hard luck my deal. Have another drink, old top!"
I suggested that at the next ranch we passed we should stop and set fire to the haystacks, just to crown the day's brutalities with something really splendid. I also said I was starving to death in a land of plenty. Ma Pettengill gazed aloft at the sun and said it was half-past twelve.
Ma Pettengill said the skunk got too little credit for its lovely character, it being the friendliest wild animal known to man and never offensive except when put upon. Wasn't we all offensive at those times? And just because the skunk happened to be superbly gifted in this respect, was that any reason to ostracize him?
Ma Pettengill now spoke in a tone that, for her, could be called hushed, though it reached me twenty feet away. "An art bungalow!" she said, and gazed upon it with seeming awe. Then she waved a quirt to indicate this and the painfully neat outbuildings. "A toy for the idle rich was that it? Well, you said something. This was one little per-diem going concern, all right.
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