"What's the use? You know it already."
He countered swiftly:
"What's use I tell you--you know already."
I yawned again flagrantly.
"Now you tell in your own way how this trouble first begin," persisted
Pete rather astonishingly. He seemed to quote from memory.
Once more I yawned, turning coldly away.
"You tell in your own words," he was again gently urging; but on the
instant his axe began to rain blows upon the log at his feet.
Sounds of honest toil were once more to be heard in the wood lot; and,
though I could not hear the other, I surmised that the sledge of Uncle
Abner now rang merrily upon his anvil. Both he and Pete had doubtless
noted at the same moment the approach of Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill,
who was spurring her jaded roan up the long rise from the creek bottom.
* * * * *
My stalwart hostess, entirely masculine to the eye from a little
distance, strode up from the corral, waved a quirt at me in greeting,
indicated by another gesture that she was dusty and tired, and vanished
briskly within the ranch house. Half an hour later she joined me in the
living-room, where I had trifled with ancient magazines and stock
journals on the big table.
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