Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/151

 Teeters' eyes narrowed.

"Because I know where the gun come from!"

Bowers looked his astonishment.

"I'd swear to that gun stock on a stack of Bibles," Teeters continued. "It was swelled from layin' in water, and a blacksmith riveted it. The blacksmith died last summmer or by now we'd a had his affidavit."

"Ain't that sick'nin'!" Bowers referred to the exasperating demise of the blacksmith.

"Anyway, Lingle's workin' like a horse on the case, and I think he'll clear it up directly. How's she standin' it?"

"Like a soldier."

"She's got sand."

"She's made of it," laconically, "and I aims to stay by her."

Teeters hesitated; then, for the first time in his life he gave his hand to a sheepherder, and, at parting, as further evidence that the caste line was down between them, said heartily:

"Come over next Sunday and eat with me; I got six or eight cackle-berries I been savin' fur somethin' special."

"Thanks. Aigs is my favor-ite fruit," Bowers replied appreciatively.

The next day Teeters went into the post office at Prouty with more letters than he had written in all his life together. The Major was at the window perspiring under the verbal attack of a highly incensed lady.

A deeply interested listener. Teeters gathered that the postmaster's faulty orthography was to blame for the contumely heaped upon him. In vain the Major protested his innocence of any malicious intent when, after