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 Perhaps that little splurge at the exercise of his new authority when he had discharged Rawlins had mollified him. Whatever the reason, he seemed now to accept Rawlins as an equal and a friend.

"How are things on the ranch?" Rawlins inquired, just a bit curious to know what business had brought Peck so far from the bosom of his wife.

"You can have it; you can put that sheep business in your hat and take it away with you," Peck replied, somewhat too intense and heated, Rawlins thought, for a man newly-married to a fortune.

"No?" said Rawlins, with amused depreciation. "What's up?"

"I am—up and a-goin'," Peck replied.

"Going? Going where?"

"Let me tell you," Peck proposed, his knife in his big fist, dribbling egg down the blade. "I thought I was marryin' a woman, but I wasn't. I wasn't marryin' nothing but a crowd of sheep. Take it from me, Rawlins: don't marry no woman that's got sheep on the brain. They ain't got no room in their hearts, no, nor even their houses, for no man. Let 'em alone. Walk away from 'em and let 'em alone."

"What's happened? Won't she come across with the money?"

"You said it," Peck nodded fervently. "Tight ain't no name for that woman. One of them iron barrels they ship gasoline in's wide open compared to her. She married me to save a hired man; that was her game, but she figgered on the wrong side of the door. She don't seem to know I ain't the kind of a man a woman can put a fence around and show him off like