But the' wasn't any difference of opinion when it came to Barbie. The'
wasn't a man on the place who wasn't willin' to stretch a neck for her.
She knew 'em all by name an' used to tease 'em an' contrairy 'em; but
she never hid behind bein' the boss's daughter. Any time they scored,
she paid, an' that was the thing that made 'em worship her. She had
changed a lot in the five years I'd been away; not only in size, in
fact, that was the least noticed in her; but she had more thinkin'
spells.
It used to be that she made up to every one right from the start; but
now she was a little shy at first, especially with Easterners.
Easterners generally are about as tantalizin' as it's possible for a
human to get, but she had never minded 'em much until this summer. Now
she'd answer the first twenty-five or thirty fool questions polite
enough, but after that she got purty frosty an' would ask 'em some
questions herself that would straighten 'em up right short in their
tracks. About every time an Easterner would pull out I noticed that
she'd put a little wider heal on the bottom of her skirt.
But she was purty much the same with me, an' after the spring round-up
she used to keep me ridin' with her most o' the time when the' wasn't
anything actually demandin' my attention. It was just about this time
that Jabez hired a new man by the name of Bill Andrews. He was about as
near speak-less as a man ever gets, an' he wasn't much liked by the
rest of us; but he was a hard worker an' a good, all-around hand, so he
got along all right.
When the fall round-up came, Barbie surprised every one by sayin' she
wasn't goin' to do any of the ridin', but would wait until after we'd
got all the sortin' out an' brandin' done, an' would then come out an'
see the whole herd in a bunch. The' wasn't a thing the matter with her
health an' we all wondered what was her reason; but I had my own
private opinion--she was beginnin' to find out she was a girl, an' she
wasn't quite used to it.
We finally rounded up in the big bend of Spike Crick, an' the stuff was
in the suet, every one of 'em. Omaha was supposed to be straw boss; but
he was too easy-goin' an' generally let the men do about as they
pleased. Bill Andrews, the new man, had a sneer on his face about half
the time, an' one mornin' when I came in from night ridin', he sez to a
bunch o' the boys: "I didn't suppose the parlor boarder ever risked any
night dampness."
They all grinned, 'cause the' wasn't any jokes barred with us; but I
didn't grin. I walked over to the group an' I sez: "Is the' anybody
else in this outfit that has any o' that brand o' supposin' about 'im?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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