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 "Me, if I was goin' to be hung, I don't reckon I'd go very heavy on the ham and eggs that morning. I always thought it was mean and onery of a sheriff to go and set out fried chicken and pie before a man that's got to step out on the gallers in the morning, the way you read about 'em doin'. Seems to me it's bad enough to be hung, without bein' reminded before goin' of all the good eatin' a feller's got to leave behind him in this world."

"That's the hard part of being hung, Fred," Barrett said.

He felt every day his feeling of friendship bind closer about this homely, hard-shelled little man. Here was a philosopher who could see so much in life that many other people with supposedly broader visions missed, and got so much more out of it than nine wiser men in every ten wise ones that could be chosen in the world's traveled ways.

"Dan's pourin' honey in her ear," said Fred, looking through the door into the office, where their partner and Cattle Kate hung over the cigar case, one on either side. "Give that boy rope and he'll wind it around Dale Findlay's legs so tight he'll lose the race. Women can't back away from a boy like Dan. He's got a clean feelin' about him, like a pine tree."

"You've said it like a true poet, Fred. If Cattle Kate's half as wise as she looks to me, she'll know which way to jump."

"Yes, but you never can tell about them women. Sometimes it looks like a man's got one of 'em tamed so she won't stray, and then when he leaves the hobble