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Fargo. The Methodist preacher’s wife had picked the grapes from her arbor. The gate at the Widow Talley’s place was hanging on one hinge. ( Some of these dudes had probably worn it out. ) Doc Jones was digging—
    “Whoa!” said Sherman sharply, reining in the horse. “What you doin’ there, Doc?”
    “Hello, there, Sherm,” said Doctor Jones.
    He was a lean weedy man, with close-cut graying hair and a long neck. He was dressed in overalls. He stuck the spade he had been using into a pile of dirt and came over to the fence, wiping his weathered face with a red bandanna.
    “What you doin’ there?” Sherman Fargo demanded again.
    “Why, I’m building a cesspool, Sherm.”
    “A cesspool! You mean you’re puttin’ in a bathroom?”
    “That’s about it. I guess I am.” The doctor laughed uncomfortably.
    “Well, I’ll be goddamned!” said Sherman, and his queer, choking voice reverberated with a conflict of emotions.
    “I just about got to, Sherm. You know how hard it is keepin’ a path open to the privy in the wintertime. If it was just for me and mine, I could manage all right, but I got patients coming in all day. Lots of women. I can’t keep one patient waiting while I run out to shovel a path for another one.”
    “Well, hell,” said Sherman, “what’s wrong with Mrs. Doc? Can’t she help out a little?”
    “She’s pregnant, Sherm. Didn’t you know about it?”
    “No, can’t say that I did,” said the farmer, wondering how he had missed this piece of information.
    “So you see I just about had to have a bathroom, Sherm.”
    “Well, maybe so,” said Sherman. “Personally, I’m past forty and I got the first time in my life to do anything like that in the house. It ain’t healthy!”
    “Oh, I think it is, Sherm,” said the doctor.
    “Well, I know it ain’t,” said Sherman. “And if I ever catch anyone dropping their pants in a house of mine, I’ll run ’em so far it’ll take ’em a week to catch up with theirselves.”
    Jones dropped his eyes unhappily. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” he mumbled.
    “It ain’t healthy,” Sherman repeated. “You’re a doctor. You ought to know that yourself.”
    “Perhaps you’re right,” said Jones. “I’ll tell you what I wish you’d do, Sherm. When I get the damned thing in, I’d like to have you come around and look it over and let me know what you think of it. Will you do that?”
    “Why,” said Sherman, “I guess I could find the time, Doc.”
    “I hate not to go ahead, now that I’ve put so much time and money in on it.”
    “And I can’t blame you for that,” said Sherman.
    “You’ll be around to look it over?”
    “I’ll be around.”
    The farmer drove off well satisfied. He did not feel that he had been unduly prying or officious, and, perhaps, he had not. In a society of so few members, the manner in which a man conducted his business was quickly felt by his neighbors. Thus, if you saw a man getting off on the wrong foot, it was your duty and privilege to set him right.
    The evening train had pulled out of the station a few minutes before, and a recent passenger stood on the platform at the end next the road. As Sherman approached, he stepped off the platform and stood in the dust waiting.
    Sherman brought the bay to a stop again.
    “That’s a nice piece of horseflesh you got there,” the stranger offered.
    “I think so,” said Sherman. “Judge of horses, are you?”
    “Fair. Good enough.” The stranger laughed easily. “The station master told me to wait here until the best-looking bay I’d ever seen hove up, and that’d be you. You’re Sherman Fargo, aren’t you?”
    “That’s me,” Sherman admitted with a tingle of pleasure. He accepted the large hand that was thrust up at him, and shook it gingerly.
    “I’m Bill Simpson, Sherm,” the man said. “World-Wide Harvester Company. I hear you’re interested in some of our stuff.”
    “Yes?” said Sherman. “A man can hear