“A girl’s argument,” remarked Dan Happersett in a lull of talk, “don’t have to be very weighty to fit any case. Anything she does is justifiable. That’s one reason why I always kept shy of women. I admit that I’ve toyed around with some of them; have tossed my tug on one or two just to see if they would run on the rope. But now generally I keep a wire fence between them and myself if they show any symptoms of being on the marry. Maybe so I was in earnest once, back on the Trinity. But it seems that every time that I made a pass, my loop would foul or fail to open or there was brush in the way.” “Just because you have a few gray hairs in your head you think you’re awful foxy, don’t you?” said Uncle Lance to Dan. “I’ve seen lots of independent fellows like you. If I had a little widow who knew her cards, and just let her kitten up to you and act coltish, inside a week you would he following her around like a pet lamb.” “I knew a fellow,” said Nancrede, lighting his pipe with a firebrand, “that when the clerk asked him, when he went for a license to marry, if he would swear that the young lady—his intended—was over twenty-one, said: ‘Yes, by G—, I’ll swear that she’s over thirty-one.’” At the next pause in the yarning, I inquired why a wild turkey always deceived itself by hiding its head and leaving the body exposed. “That it’s a fact, we all know,” volunteered Uncle Lance, “but the why and wherefore is too deep for me. I take it that it’s due to running to neck too much in their construction. Now an ostrich is the same way, all neck with not a lick of sense. And the same applies to the human family. You take one of these long-necked cowmen and what does he know outside of cattle. Nine times out of ten, I can tell a sensible girl by merely looking at her neck. Now snicker, you dratted young fools, just as if I wasn’t talking horse sense to you. Some of you boys haven’t got much more sabe than a fat old gobbler.”