"You plan t' live in Briggs," he says. He squz his lips t'gether, and turned his face towards the ranch-house. Mace was inside, goin' back'ards and for'ards 'twixt the dinin'-room and the kitchen. She looked awful cute and pretty from where we was, and was callin' sassy things to the Chinaman. Sewell watched her and watched her, and I _re_called later on (when I wasn't so all-fired anxious and _ex_cited), that the ole man's face was some white, and he was kinda all lent over. "Ya-a-as," I continues (some trembley, though), "that place of Billy's 'd suit." Two seconds, and Sewell come round on me like as if he'd chaw me into bits. "What you goin' to rent on?" he ast. "What you goin' to live on?" "Wal," I answers, sorta took back, "I got about three hunderd dollars left of the money Up-State give me. Wal, that's my nest-aig. And I can make my little forty a month--_and_ grub--_any_ ole day in the week." Sewell drawed his breath in, deep. (Look out when a man takes up air that-a-way: Somethin's shore a-comin'!) "Forty a month!" he says. "Forty a month! That just about keeps you in ca'tridges! Forty a month!--and you without a square foot of land, 'r a single, solitary horned critter, 'r more'n a' Injun's soogin' 'twixt you and the floor! Do y' think you can take that little baby gal of mine into a blank shack that ain't got a stick of anythin' in it, and turn her loose of a Monday, like a Chink, to do the wash?" "Now, ease up, boss," I says. "I reckon I think _al_most as much of Mace as you do. And I'm figgerin' to make her life just as happy as I _can._" Wal, then he walked up and down, up and down (this all happened out by the calf-corral), and blowed and blowed and blowed. Said that him and his daughters had allus made the Bar Y ranch-house seem like home to the Sewell punchers, and they was men in the outfit just low-down mean enough to take advantage of it. Said he'd raised his gal like a lady--and now she was goin' to be treated like a squaw. If it'd 'a' been any other ole man but Mace's, I'd 'a' made him swaller ev'ry one of them words 'fore ever he got 'em out. As it stood, a-course, I couldn't. So I just helt my lip till he was over his holler. (By now, y' savvy, I'd went through enough--from sayin' the wrong thing back when Paw Sewell 'r his daughter was a-talkin'--t' learn me that the best _I_ could do was just t' keep my blamed mouth shut.) Pretty soon, I says, "You spoke of land, Mister Sewell," I says, politer'n pie, and as cool as if I had the hull of Oklahomaw up my sleeve. (Been a beefsteak, y' savvy, fer him to git the idear he had me anxious any.) "Wal, how much land do you figger out that you' next son-in-law oughta have?"