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176 kitchen. It ain't so. Men just got somethin' more important on their hands most of the time." His eyes glanced sadly toward his gun rack. "Women is a pile overpraised, Dozier. The point is, they chatter a consid'able lot about how hard they work, and they all got a favorite way of making jelly or bakin' bread or sewin' calico. But I ask you, man to man, did you ever see a cleaner floor than that in a woman's kitchen?"

The marshal admitted that he never had. "But you're a rare man," he said.

Pop shook his head. "When I was a boy like you," he said, "I wasn't nothin' to be passed up too quick. But a man's young only once, and that's a short time—and he's old for years and years and years, Dozier." He added, for fear that he might have depressed his guest. "But me and Jud team it, you see. I'm extra old and Jud's extra young—so we kind of hit an average."

He touched the shoulder of the boy and there was a flash of eyes between them, the flicker of a smile. Hal Dozier drew a breath. "I got no kids of my own," he declared. "You're lucky, friend. And you're lucky to have this neat little house."

"No, I ain't. They's no luck to it, because I made every sliver of it with my own hands."

An idea came to the deputy marshal. "There's a place up in the hills behind my house, a day's ride," he said, "where I go hunting now and then, and I've an idea a little house like this would be just the thing for me. Mind if I look it over?"

Pop tamped his pipe.

"Sure thing," he said. "Look as much as you like." He stepped to a corner of the room and by a ring he raised a trapdoor. "I got a cellar 'n' everything. Take a look at it below."