Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/299

 "I reckon you'll be pullin' out and leavin' this country, Mr. Dunham, "she said. They ain't treated you very nice, always pesterin' and pickin' on you and drivin' you to shootin'."

"He ain't got no kick comin' as I can see," Shad interposed before Dunham had time to reply. "He's give 'em as good as they passed out to him, and some over, the way it looks to me."

"I hate a fuss," Bill said, disparaging the past, in which he could not see the faintest gleam of glory.

"Roastin' years'll be ready back where they grow," Mollie said longingly. "I don't have hopes I'll ever wedge one between my jaws any more, let alone settin' down with my apurn full of shell beans to make a pot of suckertash."

"Some people wouldn't be sadisfied if they had a rope on the moon," Shad complained. "When we move you say you're tired of movin', and when we set still you beef around about goin' on. I've wore out six wagons tryin' to find a country that'd suit you."

"You was always mighty careful you didn't let me do the drivin'," she reminded him, looking so sad and road-weary that Dunham pitied her as never before.

"You got chickens and eggs," Shad reminded her, with upbraiding for her ingratitude.

"And canned beets, and canned corn, and canned termaters," she added to his list of luxuries. "I've et so much canned truck in the last five years, Mr. Dunham, I'm lined with tin. They never could open me without a ax. They call this the short-grass country, but I call it tin can land."