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 girl! Yeah, and I could drive 'em out on the other side and sell 'em, and raise myself a stake. What do you think? Wouldn't that put a crimp in her?"

"It sure would," Rawlins agreed, thinking that Peck must be desperate in his dissatisfaction to consider so eagerly that plan of escape from his wife's tyranny.

"But I don't suppose I could git by with it!" Peck sighed. "I wouldn't have any grub in there, for one thing, and I expect she'd stand sheriffs all around that fence waitin' for me to come out. That's about what she'd do. They couldn't do anything to me, but they'd grab the sheep off of me before I could drive 'em over to the railroad. I guess I'll have to stick to my other scheme to put a crimp in that old lady. If there was any other woman around here I could run off with, derned if I wouldn't do it. Not Edith; I wouldn't think of runnin' off with Edith, but it'd serve the old woman right if I did."

"That's noble of you, Peck," Rawlins said, his sarcasm wasted on the shepherd's peaked head, where it split like a raindrop on the edge of an axe. "But you don't cut very much of a figure right now, to be honest with you. I don't believe you could run off with the greasiest sheepman's wife in this country."

"If I had a shave and a haircut, and my other hat and that pair of pencil-striped pants," Peck regretted, sighing as if his heart were wrapped in the gay garments and put away in moth-balls to wait the completion of his education in sheep. "I don't suppose I'll ever set eyes on them clothes of mine any more. Well, if I can't put over what I've got lined up, I'll hop a freight and burn my way to St. Joe."