They sat around the log heap fire after supper with pipes lit. It was Jim Mullen’s turn to spin a yarn.
“I don’t know no stories, boys,” said he, “I never kin remember stories I hear told, but anything I have ever saw I never forgit, and any stories I tell are true, and there ain’t no fun in ’em; but I’ll tell you about a surgical operation that was performed doun [down] on the sound when I was logging there in ’64. Joe Bullard had eat slapjacks and bacon and drank rot-gut whisky till something got the matter with his innards, and Dr. Bailey sed he’d have to perform an operation on ’im. So he give ’im chloroform, cut ’im open and tuck out a diseased intestine three foot long, inserted one from a sheep that was fresh killed, and Joe got well and fat and hearty.”
“That was nothing,” said Bill Conner, “I knew Dr. Good to take a man’s stomach out and put in one he tuck from a yearling mule, and ears groomed out on each side of his head after that a foot long, and he wouldn’t sleep no where but in a stable, and he would, kick everything that came nigh ’em,” and he’d foller [followed] off every bell mare that cum nigh camp.”
“You didn’t give me no chance to tell about the change it made with Joe Bullard,” said Jim Mullen. “After the operation he never would do nuthin but run with the sheep and eat grass; and last winter the grass was short and he got the scab and died, and they sheared four pounds of black wool off o’ him after the dirt was washed out of it, and these socks I’ve got on now wus made out of that wool.”
