Then he got on his horse and rode her through the hickories out to the brow of the hill. Presently I heard him call, and went to him with El Mahdi on a trot. He pointed his finger north across the country and, following the pointed finger, I saw the brown coat of a man disappearing behind a distant ridge. It was too far away to see who it was that travelled in that coat, but we knew as well as though the man's face had passed by our stirrups.

"Hoity-toity!" said Ump, "what doin's there'll be when he gits in with the news!"

"The air will be blue," said I.

"Streaked and striped," said he.

"I should like to see Woodford champing the bit," said I.

"I'd give a leg for the sight of it," replied the hunchback, "an' they could pick the leg."

I laughed at the hunchback's offer to the Eternal Powers. Of all the generation of rogues, he was least fitted to barter away his underpinning.

We rode back to the shop and down the hill after the cattle, Ump drumming on the pommel with his fingers and firing a cackle of fantastic monologue. "Quiller," he said, "do you think Miss Cynthia will be glad to see the drove comin' down the road?"

"Happy as a June bug," said I.

"Old Granny Lanham," continued the hunchback, "used to have a song that went like this: "'God made man, an' man made money; God made bees, an' bees made honey; God made woman, an' went away to rest Him, An' along come the devil, an' showed her how to best Him.'"

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"Meaning what?" said I.

"Meanin'," responded Ump, "that if you think you know what a woman's goin' to do, you're as badly fooled as if you burned your shirt."

"Ump," I said sharply, "what do you know about women?"

"Nothin' at all," said he, "nothin' at all. But I know about mares. An' when they lay back their ears, it don't always mean that they're goin' to kick you."




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