"Now look here, Jabez," sez I, "I ain't so old as I'll get if I live as long as I may, but I'm old enough to know that it's just as easy, to find a good boss as it is to find a good man. I've done my work without fussin', an' you've seen me in a pinch or two; an' yet this very mornin' you intimated than I 'd risk Barbie on a pony she couldn't ride. The' ain't nothin' I wouldn't do for that child, but you don't understand her, an' if you go on in your high-handed way with her you 're in for the sorrow o' your life--mark my words." "Here's your money. You ain't got sense enough to know your place an' I 'm glad to be shut of you." Jabez handed me my pay an' stamped over to the ranch house, while I kept on down the valley trail. When I reached the turn I twisted about in my saddle an' looked at the cluster o' buildings. They looked soft an' gray with old Mount Savage standin' on guard back of 'em, an' the' was a bigger lump under my necktie than I generally wore. I didn't have mach call to go anywhere, an' I sat there on my old pony, wonderin' whether or not it paid to be game. If my mother had been alive, jest at that point would have been where the West would have lost the benefit of my personal supervision--but then if my mother had lived I shouldn't never 'a' left home. I stood a stepmother six months out o' respect to my Dad, but I wouldn't 'a' stood that one a year--well, anyway, not unless I'd been chained an' muzzled. It's a funny thing to me how a man can drink an' fight an' carry on for a year at a clip an' then all of a sudden feel a hurtin' somewhere inside that nothin' wouldn't help but a little pettin'. He knows doggone well 'at there ain't none comin' to him, so he hides it by cuttin' up a little worse than usual but it's there, an' Gee! but it does rest heavy when it comes. Why, take me even now when the' wouldn't nothin' but a grizzly bear have the nerve to coddle me, an' yet week before last I felt so blue an' solitary 'at I couldn't 'a' told to save me whether I was homesick or whether it was only 'cause the beans was a little sour. I sat there on the old pony a good long time, an' then I heaved a sigh 'at made me swell out like an accordion, an' headed back to the valley trail. When I turned around, there, standin' in the trail before me with a streak down each cheek, stood Barbie. "Ya ain't goin', are ya?" sez she. "I got to go, honey," sez I. "Ain't ya never comin' back?" asked she. "Oh, I'll come back some day, ridin' a big black hoss with silver trimmed leather--an' what shall I bring little Barbie?" sez I, tryin' to be gay. "Just bring me yourself, Happy, that's all the present I want. I love you because you're the handsomest man in the world"--yes, it was me she meant, only o' course that was some years ago an' the child was unthinkable young--"an' cause you tell me the nicest stories, an' train pintos, an'--an' I'm goin' to marry you when I grow up."