Grass an' water was plenty ag'in, and the dogies was fattin' up. Round-up was drawin' on just as prospects f'r profit begins to brighten. It seemed a sort of a hash of midnight assassination, poisonin' water-holes, givin' away a podner, an' keepin' sheep, to ship them ten thousand then. An' all the time the Old Man was a-bearin' down about obeyin' orders, and beggin' me to remember Mr. Jackleg's partin' words, an' repeatin' that sayin' about obeyin' orders if it busted owners. The thing kep' millin' an' millin' in my brain till I got into the habit of settin' around an' sweatin' heinyous, ontil I'd come to with a start, in the middle of a pool of self-evolved moisture filled with wavin' rushes, an' embosomin' acres of floatin' water-lilies! That's the sort of sweater I am when a little worried. Fin'ly I turned on the Old Man like a worm--a reg'lar spiral still-worm. "How in everlastin' fire," says I, not just like that, "am I to see that every dogy gits two swigs a day on these prairies, an' wherein am I to take any notice of that shyster's fool talk about rangin' wide?" "Well," says he, "you know there's pools an' water-holes scattered from here to the Canada line, an' from the Missouri to the Continental Divide. A few head, dropped here an' there, handy to water, would be apt to live more accordin' to the hydropathic ideas of the executor of the will of A. Macdonald, diseased. At the same time you would be conformin' to his remarkable correct hyjeenic notions as to segregation." "Hyjeenic y'r grandmother!" says I, f'r the sitiwation called f'r strong language. "They couldn't be rounded up in a year; an' it's damn nonsense, anyhow, to foller the so-called idees of a--" "Oh, I see," says he, in a sort of significant way. "I see: it would be a slow round-up. Maybe my intrusts blinds me to those of the people you represent. A slow round-up wouldn't hurt me any! But, of course, you stan' f'r the mawgitchee's intrusts, an' are nat'rally hostyle--" I set sort o' numbed f'r a minute. A new thing was a-happenin' to me, to wit, an idee was workin' itself into my self-sealin', air-tight, shot-proof, Harveyized skull. Talk about your floods o' light! I got what Doc calls a Noachian deluge of it right then. "Sir," says I, "'an' Madam, truly'"--quotin' from a pome Mrs. E. had been readin'--"I _think_ I see my duty clear at last! If I fin'ly _hev_ grasped it, my labors requires my absence," says I, "an' I'll see you later."