Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/96

 This attempt at a joke, lame as it was, came so unexpectedly from the glum mouth of Tippie that it set Mrs. Duke back on her heels, figuratively, with laughter. Even Edith forgot the shadow of her mail-order beau for a moment to laugh, looking across at Rawlins for his support, which he gave heartily. Peck seemed rather bewildered than amused. He looked from one to another as if the point of the joke might be flying around the table and he expected to nab it by being alert.

"Oh, yes, I got you," he said. "Wool—blizzard—darn good joke!"

When Peck laughed, as he did immediately on his discovery of what he thought to be the humor of the thing, he elongated himself like a worm, making a croaking, dismal, distressing noise that was comparable to nothing but the working of a dry pump. Tippie, whose face had not shown a crease of mirth while the others laughed, looked up severely at Peck's outbreak, and solemnly offered him water.

"No, thanks," Peck declined, seeing no reason for such an act of courtesy at all.

Tippie put the pitcher down.

"Sounded like you needed primin'," he said.

"You was startin' to tell me about Fairweather," Mrs. Duke reminded her foreman.

"He was about to start off up here to see you, but I told him he might as well save his time. He wanted to contract for your clip next spring at forty cents, willin' to advance a dollar a head to bind you."

"I wouldn't 'a' took it, just as well he had sense enough to take your word. Wool's goin' to see sixty