"He's company.

You fellers plumb rob me every time I come to town." His voice was plaintive.
"The court rules," observed Dan Anderson, judicially, "that the parrot goes with the twins." And it was finally so decided by the referendum.
Whereupon Tom Osby, grumbling and bewailing his hard lot as common carrier, drove off with Curly across the _arroyo_ in search of a new mother for the twins.
The Littlest Girl, Curly's wife, read the letter which Tom offered.
Tears sprang to her eyes; and then, as might have been expected of the Littlest Girl, she reached up her arms to the homeless waifs, who stood at the wagon front, each clasping a stubby forefinger of Tom Osby's hand.
"Babies!" cried she.

"You poor little babies! Oh!" And so she gathered them to her breast and bore them away, even though a curly head over each shoulder gazed back longingly at the gnarled freighter on his wagon seat.

Tom Osby picked up his reins and drove back across the _arroyo_.

Thus, without unbecoming ostentation, Heart's Desire became possessed of certain features never before known in its history.
Within a few weeks the parrot and the twins had so firmly established themselves in the social system of the place as to become matters of regular conversation.