OLD MAN REED 153 
sides and counters, and before long I was so lame 
that I could hardly walk. Though I made what 
speed I could it was long after supper time before 
I finished my day’s work and started for camp. 
On the way home I passed by Reed’s ranch. The 
hermit was seated on the Wooden steps of his cabin, 
smoking a corncob pipe. He insisted on my stop- 
ping for a ‘‘bite,’’ and afterward we sat in his little 
front room—for his was a four-room edifice—and 
talked an hour or more away. That is to say, the 
old man talked and I listened. He was quite deaf, 
and as a rule spoke in answer to the suggestions of 
his own thoughts rather than to another’s ques- 
tions. 
‘‘T had a partner once,’’ he announced, after a 
short period of rumination. 
I nodded my interest in the fact. 
‘‘Ye-es,’’ continued the old homesteader, ‘‘an’ 
Jake was a purty good sort of feller—purty good. ~ 
He was a worker, too, best I ever saw. But tetchy 
—awful! Nobody couldn’t never pass no remarks 
about Jake’s doin’s or Jake hisself, withouten he’d 
up and git plumb ornery about it. Said he didn’t 
see no call for nobody t’git curyus as to what a man 
was a-goin’ to do or not goin’ to do or why he 
done it, neither. 
“‘T reck’nised Jake’s failin’ all right, but I was 
never one to humour a man over much, and Jake 
an’ me used to have some right smart spats some- 
times.’? The hermit smiled, gleefully reminiscent. 
