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 a giraft. I can make my little old thirty a week, any day. I ain't no woman's married hired-hand."

"Well, I should hope not," Rawlins encouraged him.

He wondered how far Peck's rebellion had gone, or how far it would go, with little faith in its force or ultimate success.

"She put me out there with that old Mexican feller to learn the game, goin' to make a sheepwoman's man out of me, she said. I've been out there with that old squint-eyed Indian ever since you left, and I ain't heard eight words out of him all that time. That man talks with his eyebrows; he sics his dog on them dan sheep with his hands."

"You don't take to the sheep business, then?"

"Take to it? I should say I don't! That ain't no life for a man, settin' around on a hill watchin' a gang of sheep. I'd ruther pump air in the hot place at two cents a jerk."

"She'll be cashin' in on her sheep one of these days; then you'll come into your own, Peck. She'll have a roll of money as big as a barrel. You can take her back to St. Joe, build a house with a cupola on it like a courthouse and sit on the front porch in your slippers, with nothing to do the rest of your life but figure the interest."

"It listens fine!" said Peck, making a sniffing of disdain. "Any time you see that woman leavin' this country you'll see her goin' to buy some dan fool buck for a thousand dollars, or a bunch of ewes—I call 'em stews, makes her hoppin'—guaranteed to shear nine pounds of wool a year. It ain't for me, this here life. I'd ruther have my little old thirty a week and be back