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.There was a train at noon, and from his garage door he watched the Smith family start off across the lava rocks to the depot, each one laden with bundles and disreputable grips, the spotted dog trotting optimistically ahead of the party with his pink tongue draped over the right side of his mouth.Smith turned, the baby in his arms, and called back casually to Casey:"Yuh better tie up them two milk goats when yuh milk 'em.They won't stand if yuh don't."Casey's jaw sagged.He had not thought of the goats.Indeed, the last two days they had not troubled him except by their bleating at dawn.Humbolt and Greeley had grazed them over by the railroad track so that they could watch the trains go by.Casey looked and saw that the goats were still over there where they had been driven early.He took off his hat and rubbed his palm reflectively over the back of his head, set the hat on his head with a pronounced tilt over one eyebrow, and reached for his plug of tobacco."Oh, darn the goats! Me milkin' goats! Well, now, Casey Ryan never milked no goats, an' he ain't goin' to milk no goats! You can ask anybody if they think't he will."Casey was very busy that day, and he had no dull-eyed Juan to do certain menial tasks about the cars that stopped before his garage.Nevertheless he kept an eye on the station of Patmos until the westbound train had come and had departed, and on the rough road between the railroad and the garage for another half hour, until he was sure that the Smith family were not coming back.Then he went more cheerfully about his work, now and then glancing, perhaps, at the truck which had been driven into the rear of the garage where it was very much in his way, but was safe from pilfering fingers.It was not such a bad truck, give it new tires.Casey had already figured the price at which he could probably sell it, on an easy payment plan, to the man who hauled water for Patmos.It was more than the amount of his loan, naturally.By noon he was rather hoping the "Smith Bros." would fail to take up that note.Casey, you see, was not counting the goats at all.He had a vague idea that, while they were nominally a part of the security, they were actually of no importance whatever.They would run loose until Smith came after them, he guessed.He did not intend to milk any nanny goats, so that settled the goat question for Casey.Casey simply did not know anything about goats.He ought to have used a little logic and not so much happy-go-lucky "t'ell with the goats." That is all very well, so far as it goes, and we all know that everybody says it and thinks it.But it does, not settle the problem.It never occurred to Casey, for instance, that the going of Humbolt and Greeley and the little spotted dog would make any difference.It really did make a great deal, you see.And it never occurred to Casey that goats are domesticated animals after they have been hauled around the country for weeks and weeks in a trailer to a truck, or that they will come back to the only home they know.I don't know how long it takes goats to fill up.I never kept a goat or goats.And I don't know how long they will stand around and blat before they start something.I don't know much more about goats than Casey, or didn't, at least, until he told me.By that time Casey knew a lot more, I suspect, than he could put into words.Casey says that he heard them blatting around outside, but he was busy trying to straighten a radius rod—Casey said he was taking the kinks outa that hootin'-annie that goes behind the front ex and turns the dingbats when you steer—for a man who walked back and forth and slapped his hands together nervously and kept asking how long it was going to take, and how far it was to Barstow, and whether the road from there up across the Mojave was in good condition, and whether the Death Valley road out from Ludlow went clear through the valley and was a cut-off north, or whether it just went into the valley and stopped.Casey says that the only time he ever was in Death Valley it was with a couple of burros and that he like to have stayed there.He got to telling the man about his trip into Death Valley and how he just did get out by a scratch.So he didn't pay any attention to the goats until he went back after some cold water for the white little woman in the car, that looked all tuckered out and scared.It was then he found the whole corner chewed off one water bag and the other water bag on the ground and a lot more than the corner gone.And the billy was up on his hind feet with his horns caught in the fullest barrel, and was snorting and snuffling in a drowning condition and tilting the barrel perilously.The other goats were acting just like plain damn goats, said Casey, and merely looking for trouble without having found any.Casey says he had to call the Oasis man to help him get Billy out of the barrel, and that even then he had to borrow a saw and saw off one horn— either that, or cave in the barrel with Maud—and he needed that barrel worse than the billy goat needed two horns; but he told me that if he'd had Maud in his two hands just then he sure would have caved in the goat
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