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 "Your mother and the rest of them are still in Kansas City?"

"Mother went many years before him. My married sister lives in El Paso. And so you know all about me now, Miss Fannie, from the cradle to Kansas."

She rolled a piece of bacon in a pancake and ate it like a banana.

"You're a Texas cowman, ridin' trail for the association," she said. "What would you do, Texas, if somebody you knew from down there was to come drivin' a big herd up here and wanted you to let 'em through the quarantine line?"

"It isn't likely, Fannie, that anybody I know ever will come here doin' that."

"Well, if somebody you didn't know was to come from Texas and ask you to let them slip through this gap in the line you watch?"

"You oughtn't to ask me that, Miss Fannie."

She looked at him steadily a moment, reached out, touched his arm.

"No, I oughtn't. I know what you'd do without askin'. You'd fight till you had to prop your eyes open—you'd die before you'd let them through."

Texas seemed to be very much embarrassed by this expression of confidence. He looked round at the skies, his head tilted back as if he listened.

"It sure is goin' to rain, Fannie," he said.