"Cat been licking the butter again ?" Mose grunted and slammed three pie tins into a cupboard with such force that two of them bounced out and rolled across the floor.

One came within reach of his foot, and he kicked it into the wood-box, and swore at it while it was on the way.

"And I wisht it was Ford Campbell himself, the snoopin', stingy, kitchen-grannying, booze-fightin', son-of-a-sour-dough bannock!" he finished prayerfully.
"He surely hasn't tried to mix in here, and meddle with you ?" Dick asked, helping himself to a piece of pie.

You know the tone; it had just that inflection of surprised sympathy which makes you tell your troubles without that reservation which a more neutral listener would unconsciously impel.
I am not going to give Mose's version, because he warped the story to make it fit his own indignation, and did not do Ford justice.

This, then, is the exact truth: Ford chanced to be walking up along the edge of the gully which ran past the bunk-house, and into which empty cans and other garbage were thrown.
Sometimes a can fell short, so that all the gully edge was liberally decorated with a gay assortment of canners' labels.