"Split her tongue?" Walsh echoed, raising himself from a tarpaulin. "That's a new one on me. What're you going to do that for?"
"So she can lick both sides of her calf at once," Lafe drawled, and released the animal.
A perfect gale of laughter swept from the Anvil outfit.
"Damn my fat haid! Damn my ol' fat haid!" bellowed the cook.
A fig for Walsh and his prowess as a gunfighter! Dave feared no man. He went his way, grouchy and unreckoning, secure in the sanctity that hedges a cook. Besides, if that failed him, he had usually a pothook handy. Now, he threw himself flat on his back and kicked his heels in the air.
One must give Walsh his due. He had pluck to spare, but ridicule is the hardest thing to face in life. Besides, what earthly use was there in defying a whole outfit? He gave a sickly smile and returned to his tarpaulin.
"Well," said the boss, "we're moving to-day, Walsh. You don't seem to have found any of your stuff. It's certain you won't, where we're heading. So I reckon it'd save you trouble if you got moving."
"All right," he said at last. "You're the boss."
In this manner was discipline restored among the Anvil men.
Rub-a-dub-dub, Three men in a tub, The butcher, the baker, The candlestick maker; They all jumped out of a holler pertater. Rub-a-dub-dub.
"Do you call them your prayers?" asked Lafe sternly. "I done told you to get to bed more'n a hour ago, son. I swan I can't figure what your ma's thinking of. Now, drag it."
The boy turned a confident grin on his sire and continued his march through the house, rub-a-dub-dubbing to the best that was in him. He was attired lightly in a chemise, and was accordingly able to give an unhampered illustration of how the candlestick maker and the other tradesmen emerged from the spud. Hetty had gone to prepare his bed; returning, she made a dive for the fugitive and bore him, struggling, to his unwelcome nest. There she was obliged to growl over him in imitation of a big old bear, before Lafe, Jr., became reconciled.
Johnson listened with scant patience to their further discourse inside the bedroom.
"That ain't the way to learn the boy his prayers," he interrupted. "Bless _Mister_ Shortredge. Mister! That's a fine way for a li'l feller to pray, ain't it? Call him Jim or Buf'lo, Hetty. Call him Jim or Buf'lo. I reckon the Almighty don't know Jim as Mister."