"Wal, no use bellyachin' about it," he answers. "But you're allus a-stickin' in that lip of yourn. And--you'll _re_call what I oncet said concernin' the feller that sticks in his lip." (I could see it made him feel better t' think he had the bulge on me.) "She won't come back," I goes on. (I felt pretty bad, I can tell y'.) "No, boss, she won't. I know that gal better'n you do. She's gone t' Briggs, and she'll stay." "She'll be back in a' hour. Rose cain't keep her, and----" But I was outen the room and makin' fer the bunk-house. When I got there, I begun t' change my clothes. Hairoil was inside. (He'd been a-listenin' to the rumpus, likely.) "Don't go off half-cocked," he says to me. "Cupid's drunk," says Monkey Mike. "Somebody's hit him with a bar-towel." But I knowed what I was a-goin' to do. Two wags of a dawg's tail, and I was in the house again, facin' the ole man. "Sewell," I says, "I want my time." "Where you goin', Cupid?" he ast, reachin' into his britches-pocket. I took my little forty dollars and run it into my buckskin sack. "I'm a-goin' into Briggs," I says, "t' see if I can talk some sense into that gal's haid." The ole man give a kinda sour laugh. "Mebbe you think you can bring her home on hossback again," he says. "Wal, just remember, if she turns loose one of her tantrums, that you poured out this drench you'self. It's like that there feller in Kansas." And he give that laugh of hisn again. "Ever heerd about him?" "No," I says; "no, what about you' Kansas feller?" "Wal,"--the boss pulled out a plug of t'bacca,--"he bought a house and lot fer five hunderd dollars. The lot was guaranteed to raise anythin', and the house was painted the prettiest kind of a green. Natu'lly, he thought he owned 'em. Wal, things went smooth till one night when he was away from home. Then a blamed cyclone come along. Shore enough, that lot of hisn could raise. It raised plumb into the air, house and all, and the hull business blowed into the neighbourin' State! "'What goes up must come down,' says the feller. And knowin' which way that cyclone travelled, he started in the same _di_rection, hotfoot. He goes and goes. Fin'lly he comes to a ranch where they was a new barn goin' up. It was a pinto proposition. Part of it wasn't painted, and some of it was green. He stopped to demand portions of his late residence. "The man he spoke to quit drivin' nails just long enough to answer. 'When you Kansas folks git up one of them baby cyclones of yourn,' he says, 'fer Heaven's sake have sand enough to accept the hand-out it gives y'.'" "I savvy what you mean," I says to the ole man, "but you fergit that in this case the moccasin don't fit. Another man's behind this, boss. The little gal has ketched singin'-bugs. And when she gits enough cash----" "How can _she_ git cash?" "The eatin'-house is short of, help, Sewell. She can git a job easy--passin' fancy Mulligan to the pilgrims that go through."