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 on the line down at the ranch one day, and it was hard to believe you weren't inside of them."

"You did, Rawlins? Was it that pencil-striped pair?" Peck inquired wistfully, a tender look in his goggling eyes.

"I don't remember the pattern, but it looked like somebody had cut you in two and your legs kept right on going. You've got more than personality in your clothes, Peck; more than individuality. I think you might advertise it as spirituality. I never saw so much soul in a pair of pants in my life. There was a coat of yours hanging on Tippie's hook behind the kitchen door"

"Was it a light-blue worsted, shaped to the waist, full silk-lined, roll?"

Rawlins shook his head solemnly, his hands spread on the biscuit dough as he paused an impressive moment in patting it out.

"I didn't notice the color, Peck; I was so struck by the resemblance to you I didn't have an eye for anything else. You take off more and leave it inside your clothes than any man I ever met. I think your wife feels your essence in your garments, too, from the loving look she turned on that coat every little while."

"Yeah, she was thinkin' how she'd like to have me inside of it to slam around with a bed slat, I'll bet you, Rawlins. Any time that old girl takes her heart out of the moth balls for the man she's married to you can straddle the Missouri River."

"My opinion is you've got her sized up altogether wrong, Peck."

"What the doo—devil do you know about it?" Peck