On the Arrowhead Ranch it was noon by the bell that Lew Wee loves to
clang. It may have been half an hour earlier or later on other ranches,
for Lew Wee is no petty precisian. Ma Pettengill had ridden off at dawn;
and, rather than eat luncheon in solitary state, I joined her retainers
for the meal in the big kitchen, which is one of my prized privileges. A
dozen of us sat at the long oilcloth-covered table and assuaged the more
urgent pangs of hunger in a haste that was speechless and far from
hygienic. No man of us chewed the new beef a proper number of times; he
swallowed intently and reached for more. It was rather like twenty
minutes for dinner at what our railway laureates call an eating house.
Lew Wee shuffled in bored nonchalance between range and table. It was an
old story to him.
The meal might have gone to a silent end, though moderating in pace; but
we had with us to-day--as a toastmaster will put it--the young
veterinary from Spokane. This made for talk after actual starvation had
been averted--fragmentary gossip of the great city; of neighbouring
ranches in the valley, where professional duty had called him; of
Adolph, our milk-strain Durham bull, whose indisposition had brought him
several times to Arrowhead; and then of Squat, our youngest cowboy, from
whose fair brow the intrepid veterinary, on his last previous visit, had
removed a sizable and embarrassing wen with what looked to me like a
pair of pruning shears.
The feat had excited much uncheerful comment among Squat's _confrères_,
bets being freely offered that he would be disfigured for life, even if
he survived; and what was the sense of monkeying with a thing like that
when you could pull your hat down over it? Of course you couldn't wear a
derby with it; but no one but a darned town dude would ever want to wear
a derby hat, anyway, and the trouble with Squat was, he wished to be
pretty. It was dollars to doughnuts the thing would come right back
again, twice as big as ever, and better well enough alone. But Squat,
who is also known as Timberline, and is, therefore, a lanky six feet
three, is young and sensitive and hopeful, and the veterinary is a
matchless optimist; and the thing had been brought to a happy
conclusion.
Squat, being now warmly urged, blushingly turned his head from side to
side that all might remark how neatly his scar had healed. The
veterinary said it had healed by first intention; that it was as pretty
a job as he'd ever done on man or beast; and that Squat would be more of
a hit then ever with the ladies because of this interesting chapter in
his young life. Then something like envy shone in the eyes of those who
had lately disparaged Squat for presuming to thwart the will of God; I
detected in more than one man there the secret wish that he had
something for this ardent expert to eliminate. Squat continued to blush
pleasurably and to bolt his food until another topic diverted this
entirely respectful attention from him. The veterinary asked if we had
heard about the Indian ruction down at Kulanche last night--Kulanche
Springs being the only pretense to a town between our ranch and Red
Gap--a post-office, three general stores, a score of dwellings, and a
low drinking place known as The Swede's. The news had not come to us; so
the veterinary obliged. A dozen Indians, drifting into the valley for
the haying about to begin, had tarried near Kulanche and bought whiskey
of the Swede. The selling of this was a lawless proceeding and the
consumption of it by the purchasers had been hazardous in the extreme.
Briefly, the result had been what is called in newspaper headlines a
stabbing affray. I quote from our guest's recital:
"Then, after they got calmed down and hid their knives, and it
looked peaceful again, they decided to start all over; but the
liquor was out, so that old scar-faced Pyann jumps on a pony and
rides over from the camp for a fresh supply. He pulled up out in
front of the Swede's and yelled for three bottles to be brought out
to him, pronto! If he'd sneaked round to the back door and
whispered he'd have got it all right, but this was a little too
brash, because there were about a dozen men in the bar and the
Swede was afraid to sell an Injin whiskey so openly. All he could
do was go to the door and tell this pickled aborigine that he never
sold whiskey to Injins and to get the hell out of there! Pyann
called the Swede a liar and some other things, mentioning dates,
and started to climb off his pony, very ugly.
"The Swede wasn't going to argue about it, because we'd all come
out in front to listen; so he pulled his gun and let it off over
Pyann's head; and a couple of the boys did the same thing, and that
started the rest--about six others had guns--till it sounded like a
bunch of giant crackers going off. Old Pyann left in haste, all
right. He was flattened out on his pony till he looked like a
plaster.
"We didn't hear any more of him last night, but coming up here this
morning I found out he'd done a regular Paul Revere ride to save
his people; he rode clear up as far as that last camp, just below
here, on your place, yelling to every Injin he passed that they'd
better take to the brush, because the whites had broken out at
Kulanche. At that, the Swede ought to be sent up, knowing they'll
fight every time he sells them whiskey. Two of these last night
were bad cut in this rumpus."
"Yes; and he'd ought to be sent up for life for selling it to white men,
too--the kind he sells." This was Sandy Sawtelle, speaking as one who
knew and with every sign of conviction. "It sure is enterprising
whiskey. Three drinks of it make a decent man want to kill his little
golden-haired baby sister with an axe. Say, here's a good one--lemme
tell you! I remember the first time, about three, four years ago--"
The speaker was interrupted--it seemed to me with intentional rudeness.
One man hurriedly wished to know who did the cutting last night;
another, if the wounded would recover; and a third, if Pete, an aged red
vassal of our own ranch, had been involved. Each of the three flashed a
bored glance at Sandy as he again tried for speech:
"Well, as I was saying, I remember the first time, about three, four
years ago--"
"If old Pete was down there I bet his brother-in-law did most of the
knifework," put in Buck Devine firmly.
It was to be seen that they all knew what Sandy remembered the first
time and wished not to hear it again. Others of them now sought to
stifle the memoir, while Sandy waited doggedly for the tide to ebb. I
gathered that our Pete had not been one of the restive convives, he
being known to have spent a quiet home evening with his mahala and their
numerous descendants, in their camp back of the wood lot; I also
gathered that Pete's brother-in-law had committed no crime since Pete
quit drinking two years before. There was veiled mystery in these
allusions to the brother-in-law of Pete. It was almost plain that the
brother-in-law was a lawless person for whose offenses Pete had more
than once been unjustly blamed. I awaited details; but meantime--
"Well, as I was saying, I remember the first time, about three, four
years ago--"
Sandy had again dodged through a breach in the talk, quite as if nothing
had happened. Buck Devine groaned as if in unbearable anguish. The
others also groaned as if in unbearable anguish. Only the veterinary and
I were polite.
"Oh, let him get it offen his chest," urged Buck wearily. "He'll perish
if he don't--having two men here that never heard him tell it." He
turned upon the raconteur, with a large sweetness of manner: "Excuse me,
Mr. Sawtelle! Pray do go on with your thrilling reminiscence. I could
just die listening to you. I believe you was wishing to entertain the
company with one of them anecdotes or lies of which you have so rich a
store in that there peaked dome of yours. Gents, a moment's silence
while this rare personality unfolds hisself to us!"
"Say, lemme tell you--here's a good one!" resumed the still placid
Sandy. "I remember the first time, about three, four years ago, I ever
went into The Swede's. A stranger goes in just ahead of me and gets to
the bar before I do, kind of a solemn-looking, sandy-complected little
runt in black clothes.
"'A little of your best cooking whiskey,' says he to the Swede, while
I'm waiting beside him for my own drink.
"The Swede sets out the bottle and glass and a whisk broom on the bar.
That was sure a new combination on me. 'Why the whisk broom?' I says to
myself. 'I been in lots of swell dives and never see no whisk broom
served with a drink before.' So I watch. Well, this sad-looking sot
pours out his liquor, shoots it into him with one tip of the glass; and,
like he'd been shot, he falls flat on the floor, all bent up in a
convulsion--yes, sir; just like that! And the Swede not even looking
over the bar at him!
"In a minute he comes out of this here fit, gets on his feet and up to
the bar, grabs the whisk broom, brushes the dust off his clothes where
he's rolled on the floor, puts back the whisk broom, says, 'So long,
Ed!' to the Swede--and goes out in a very businesslike manner.
"Then the Swede shoves the bottle and a glass and the whisk broom over
in front of me, but I says: 'No, thanks! I just come in to pass the time
of day. Lovely weather we're having, ain't it?' Yes, sir; down he goes
like he's shot, wriggles a minute, jumps up, dusts hisself off, flies
out the door; and the Swede passing me the same bottle and the same
broom, and me saying: 'Oh, I just come in to pass the time of--'"
The veterinary and I had been gravely attentive. The faces of the others
wore not even the tribute of pretended ennui. They had betrayed an
elaborate deafness. They now affected to believe that Sandy Sawtelle
had not related an anecdote. They spoke casually and with an effect of
polished ease while yet here capitulated, as tale-tellers so often will.
"I remember a kid, name of Henry Lippincott, used to set in front of me
at school," began Buck Devine, with the air of delicately breaking a
long silence; "he'd wiggle his ears and get me to laughing out loud, and
then I'd be called up for it by teacher and like as not kept in at
recess."
"You ought to seen that bunch of tame alligators down to the San
Francisco Fair," observed Squat genially. "The old boy that had 'em says
'Oh, yes, they would make fine pets, and don't I want a couple for ten
dollars to take home to the little ones?' But I don't. You come right
down to household pets--I ruther have me a white rabbit or a canary bird
than an alligator you could step on in the dark some night and get all
bit up, and mebbe blood poison set in."
"I recollect same as if it was yesterday," began Uncle Abner quickly.
"We was coming up through northern Arizona one fall, with a bunch of
longhorns and we make this here water hole about four P.M.--or mebbe a
mite after that or a little before; but, anyway, I says to Jeff Bradley,
'Jeff,' I says to him, 'it looks to me almighty like--'"
Sandy Sawtelle savagely demanded a cup of coffee, gulped it heroically,
rose in a virtuous hurry, and at the door wondered loudly if he was
leaving a bunch of rich millionaires that had nothing to do but loaf in
their club all the afternoon and lie their heads off, or just a passell
of lazy no-good cowhands that laid down on the job the minute the boss
stepped off the place. Whereupon, it being felt that the rabid
anecdotist had been sufficiently rebuked, we all went out to help the
veterinary look at Adolph for twenty minutes more.
Adolph is four years old and weighs one ton. He has a frowning and
fearsome front and the spirit of a friendly puppy. The Arrowhead force
loafed about in the corral and imparted of its own lore to the
veterinary while he took Adolph's temperature. Then Adolph, after nosing
three of the men to have his head rubbed, went to stand in the
rush-grown pool at the far end of the corral, which the gallery took to
mean that he still had a bit of fever, no matter what the glass thing
said.
The veterinary opposed a masterly silence to this majority diagnosis,
and in the absence of argument about it there seemed nothing left for
the Arrowhead retainers but the toil for which they were paid. They went
to it lingeringly, one by one, seeming to feel that perhaps they wronged
the ailing Adolph by not staying there to talk him over.
Uncle Abner, who is the Arrowhead blacksmith, was the last to leave--or
think of leaving--though he had mule shoes to shape and many mules to
shoe. He glanced wistfully again at Adolph, in cool water to his knees,
tugged at his yellowish-white beard, 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 scrawniness, and his arms
are those of the boys you see at the track meet of Lincoln Grammar
School Number Seven. The mutilated derby hat he now wore, a hat that had
been weathered from plum colour to a poisonous green--a shred of peacock
feather stuck in the band--lent his face no dignity whatever.
In truth, his was not an easy face to lend dignity to. It would still
look foolish, no matter what was lent it. He has a smug fringe of white
curls about the back and sides of his head, the beard of a prophet, and
the ready speech of a town bore. The blacksmith we read of can look the
whole world in the face, fears not any man, and would far rather do
honest smithing any day in the week--except Sunday--than live the life
of sinful ease that Uncle Abner was leading for the moment.
Uncle Abner may have feared no man; but he feared a woman. It was easy
to see this as he chatted the golden hours away to me. His pale eyes
seldom left the road where it came over a distant hill. When the woman
did arrive--Oh, surely the merry clang of the hammer on the anvil would
be heard in Abner's shop, where he led a dog's life. But, for a time at
least--
"So he's one of these tough murderers, is he?"
"You said it! Always a-creating of disturbances up on the reservation,
where he rightly belongs. Mebbe that's why they let him go off. Anyway,
he never stays there. Even in his young days they tell me he wouldn't
stay put. He'd disappear for a month and always come back with a new
wife. Talk about your Mormons! One time they sent out a new agent to the
reservation, and he hears talk back and forth of Pete philandering
thisaway; and he had his orders from the Gov'ment at Washington, D.C.,
to stamp out this here poly-gamy--or whatever you call it; so he orders
Pete up on the carpet and says to him: 'Look here now, Pete! You got a
regular wife, ain't you?' Pete says sure he has; and how could he say
anything else--the old liar! 'Well,' says Mr. Agent, 'I want you to get
this one regular wife of yours and lead a decent, orderly home life with
her; and don't let me hear no more scandalous reports about your goings
on.'
"Pete says all right; but he allows he'll have to have help in getting
her back home, because she's got kind of antagonistic and left him. The
agent says he'll put a stop to that if Pete'll just point her out. So
they ride down about a mile from the agency to a shack where they's a
young squaw out in front graining a deerhide and minding her own
business. She looked up when they come and started to jaw Pete something
fierce; but the agent tells her the Gov'ment frowns on wives running
off, and Pete grabbed her; and the agent he helps, with her screeching
and biting and clawing like a female demon. The agent is going to see
that Pete has his rights, even if it don't seem like a joyous household;
and finally they get her scrambled onto Pete's horse in front of him and
off they go up the trail. The agent yells after 'em that Pete is to
remember that this is his regular wife and he'd better behave himself
from now on.
"And then about sunup next morning this agent is woke up by a pounding
on his door. He goes down and here's Pete clawed to a frazzle and
whimpering for the law's protection because his squaw has chased him
over the reservation all night trying to kill him. She'd near done it,
too. They say old Pete was so scared the agent had to soothe him like a
mother."
Uncle Abner paused to relight his pipe, meantime negotiating a doubly
vigilant survey of the distant road. But I considered that he had told
me nothing to the discredit of Pete, and now said as much.
"You couldn't blame the man for wanting his wife back, could you?" I
demanded. "Of course he might have been more tactful."
"Tactful's the word," agreed Uncle Abner cordially. "You see, this
wasn't Pete's wife at all. She was just a young squaw he'd took a fancy
to."
"Oh!" Nothing else seemed quite so fitting to say.
"'Nother time," resumed the honest blacksmith, "the Gov'ment at
Washington, D.C., sent out orders for all the Injun kids to be sent off
to school. Lots of the fathers made trouble about this, but Pete was the
worst of all--the old scoundrel! The agent said to him would Pete send
his kids peaceful; and Pete said not by no means. So the agent says in
that case they'll have to take 'em by force. Pete says he'll be right
there a-plenty when they're took by force. So next day the agent and his
helper go down to Pete's tepee. It's pitched up on a bank just off the
road and they's a low barrier of brush acrost the front of it. They look
close at this and see the muzzle of a rifle peeking down at 'em; also,
they can hear little scramblings and squealings of about a dozen or
fourteen kids in the tepee that was likely nestled up round the old
murderer like a bunch of young quail.
"Well, they was something kind of cold and cheerless about the muzzle of
this rifle poked through the brush at 'em; so the agent starts in and
makes a regular agent speech to Pete. He says the Great White Father at
Washington, D.C., has wished his children to be give an English
education and learnt to write a good business hand, and all like that;
and read books, and so on; and the Great White Father will be peeved if
Pete takes it in this rough way. And the agent is disappointed in him,
too, and will never again think the same of his old friend, and why
can't he be nice and submit to the decencies of civilization--and so
on--a lot of guff like that; but all the time he talks this here rifle
is pointing right into his chest, so you can bet he don't make no false
motions.
"At last, when he's told Pete all the reasons he can think up and
guesses mebbe he's got the old boy going, he winds up by saying: 'And
now what shall I tell the Great White Father at Washington you say to
his kind words?' Old Pete, still not moving the rifle a hair's breadth,
he calls out: 'You tell the Great White Father at Washington to go to
hell!' Yes, sir; just like that he says it; and I guess that shows you
what kind of a murderer he is. And what I allus say is, 'what's the use
of spending us taxpayers' good money trying to educate trash like that,
when they ain't got no sense of decency in the first place, and the
minute they learn to talk English they begin to curse and swear as bad
as a white man? They got no wish to improve their condition, which is
what I allus have said and what I allus will say.
"Anyway, this agent didn't waste no more time on Pete's brats. He come
right away from there, though telling his helper it was a great pity
they couldn't have got a good look into the tepee, because then they'd
have known for the first time just what kids round there Pete really
considered his. Of course he hadn't felt he should lay down his life in
the interests of this trifling information, and I don't blame him one
bit. I wouldn't have done it myself. You can't tell me a reservation
with Pete on it would be any nice place. Look at the old crook now,
still lamming that axe round to beat the cars because he thinks he's
being watched! I bet he'll be mad down to his moccasins when he finds
out the Old Lady's been off all day."
Uncle Abner yawned and stretched his sun-baked form with weary
rectitude. Then he looked with pleased dismay into the face of his
silver watch.
"Now, I snum! Here she's two-thirty! Don't it beat all how time flits
by, as it were, when you meet a good conversationalist and get started
on various topics! Well, I guess like as not I better amble along over
toward the little shop and see if they ain't some little thing to be
puttered at round there. Yes, sir; all play and no work makes Jack a
dull boy, as the saying is."
The honest fellow achieved a few faltering paces in the general
direction of his shop. Then he turned brightly.
"A joke's a joke, all right; but, after all, I hate to see old Pete
working hisself into the grave that way, even if he ain't a regular
human being. Suppose you loaf over there and put him wise that the
Madam's been off the place since sunup. The laugh's on him enough
already."
Which showed that Uncle Abner had not really a bad heart. And I did even
as he had said.
* * * * *
Pete was instantly stilled by my brief but informing speech. He leaned
upon his axe and gazed at me with shocked wonder. The face of the
American Indian is said to be unrevealing--to be a stoic mask under
which his emotions are ever hidden. For a second time this day I found
tradition at fault. Pete's face was lively and eloquent under his shock
of dead-black hair--dead black but for half a dozen gray or grayish
strands, for Pete's eighty years have told upon him, even if he is not
yet sufficiently gray at the temples to be a hero in a magazine costing
over fifteen cents. His face is a richly burnished mahogany and tells
little of his years until he smiles; then from brow to pointed chin it
cracks into a million tiny wrinkles, an intricate network of them
framing his little black eyes, which are lashless, and radiating from
the small mouth to the high cheek bones of his race.
His look as he eyed me became utter consternation; then humour slowly
lightened the little eyes. He lifted the eyes straight into the glare of
the undimmed sun; nor did they blink as they noted the hour. "My good
gosh!" he muttered; then stalked slowly round the pile of stove wood
that had been spreading since morning. He seemed aggrieved--yet
humorously aggrieved--as he noted its noble dimensions. He cast away the
axe and retrieved some outflung sticks, which he cunningly adjusted to
the main pile to make it appear still larger to the casual eye.
"My good gosh!" he muttered again. "My old mahala she tell me Old Lady
Pettengill go off early this morning; but I think she make one big
mistake. Now what you know about that?" He smiled winningly now and
became a very old man indeed, the smile lighting the myriad minute
wrinkles that instantly came to life. Again he ruefully surveyed the
morning's work. "I think that caps the climax," said he, and grimanced
humorous dismay for the entertainment of us both.
I opened my cigarette case to him. Like his late critic, Pete availed
himself of two, though he had not the excuse of a pipe to be filled. One
he coyly tucked above his left ear and one he lighted. Then he sat
gracefully back upon his heels and drew smoke into his innermost
recesses, a shrunken little figure of a man in a calico shirt of gay
stripes, faded blue overalls, and shoes that were remarkable as ruins.
With a pointed chip in the slender fingers of one lean brown hand--a
narrow hand of quite feminine delicacy--he cleared the ground of other
chips and drew small figures in the earth.
"Some of your people cut up in a fight down at Kulanche last night," I
remarked after a moment of courteous waiting.
"Mebbe," said Pete, noncommittal.
"Were you down there?"
"I never kill a man with a knife," said Pete; "that ain't my belief."
He left an opening that tempted, but I thought it wise to ignore that
for the moment.
"You an old man, Pete?"
"Mebbe."
"How old?"
"Oh, so-so."
"You remember a long time ago--how long?"
He drew a square in his cleared patch of earth, subdivided it into
little squares, and dotted each of these in the centre before he spoke.
"When Modocs have big soldier fight."
"You a Modoc?"
"B'lieve me!"
"When Captain Jack fought the soldiers over in the Lava Beds?"
"Some fight--b'lieve me!" said Pete, erasing his square and starting a
circle.
"You fight, too?"
"Too small; I do little odd jobs--when big Injin kill soldier I skin um
head."
I begged for further items, but Pete seemed to feel that he had been
already verbose. He dismissed the historic action with a wise saying:
"Killing soldiers all right; but it don't settle nothing." He drew a
triangle.
Indelicately then I pried into his spiritual life.
"You a Christian, Pete?"
"Injin-Christian," he amended--as one would say
"Progressive-Republican."
"Believe in God?"
"Two." This was a guarded admission; I caught his side glance.
"Which ones?" I asked it cordially; and Pete smiled as one who detects a
brother liberal in theology.
"Injin God; Christian God. Injin God go like this--" He brushed out his
latest figure and drew a straight line a foot long. And Christian God go
so--he drew a second straight line perpendicular to the first. I was
made to see the line of his own God extending over the earth some fifty
feet above its surface, while the line of the Christian God went
straight and endlessly into the heavens. "Injin God stay
close--Christian God go straight up. Whoosh!" He looked toward the
zenith to indicate the vanishing line. "I think mebbe both O.K. You
think both O.K.?"
"Mebbe," I said.
Pete retraced the horizontal line of his own God and the perpendicular
line of the other.
"Funny business," said he tolerantly.
"Funny business," I echoed. And then--the moment seeming ripe for
intimate personal research: "Pete, how about that brother-in-law of
yours? Is he a one-God Christian or a two-God, like you?"
He hurriedly brushed out his lines, flashed me one of his uneasy side
glances, and seemed not to have heard my question. He sprang lightly
from his heels, affected to scan a murky cloud-bank to the south,
ignited his second cigarette from the first, and seemed relieved by the
actual diversion of Laura, his present lawful consort, now plodding
along the road just outside the fence.
Laura is ponderous and billowy, and her moonlike face of rusty bronze is
lined to show that she, too, has gone down a little into the vale of
years. She was swathed in many skirts, her shoulders enveloped by a
neutral-tinted shawl, and upon her head was a modist toque of light
straw, garlanded with pink roses. This may have been her hunt constume,
for the carcasses of two slain rabbits swung jauntily from her girdle.
She undulated by us with no sign. Pete's glistening little eyes lingered
in appraisal upon her noble rotundities and her dangling quarry. Then,
with a graceful flourish of the new cigarette, he paid tribute to the
ancient fair.
"That old mahala of mine, she not able to chew much now; but she's some
swell chicken--b'lieve me!"