Of course he'll get to town sooner or later and
play this fourteen number, being that the new reform administration,
with Lon Price as Mayor, is now safely elected and the game has opened
up again. Yes, sir; he's nutty about stitches in a mule. I wouldn't put
it past him that he had old Jerry kicked on purpose to-day!"
VII
KATE; OR, UP FROM THE DEPTHS
This day I fared abroad with Ma Pettengill over wide spaces of the
Arrowhead Ranch. Between fields along the river bottom were gates
distressingly crude; clumsy, hingeless panels of board fence, which I
must dismount and lift about by sheer brawn of shoulder. Such gates
combine the greatest weight with the least possible exercise of man's
inventive faculties, and are named, not too subtly, the Armstrong gate.
This, indeed, is the American beauty of ranch humour, a flower of
imperishable fragrance handed to the visitor--who does the lifting with
guarded drollery or triumphant snicker, as may be. Buck Devine or Sandy
Sawtelle will achieve the mot with an aloof austerity that abates no jot
unto the hundredth repetition; while Lew Wee, Chinese cook of the
Arrowhead, fails not to brighten it with a nervous giggle, impairing its
vocal correctness, moreover, by calling it the "Armcatchum" gate.
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