Her suavity deceived him and he grinned sheepishly.
“Somethin’ like that, maybe.”
“You are married, then?”
The herder began to see where he was drifting.
“Er—practically,” he replied ambiguously.
“So you lied when you joined the Outfit and I asked you?”
The herder whined plaintively.
“I heerd you wouldn’t hire no fambly man if you knew it.”
“When I make a rule there’s a reason for it. 'Family men' are unreliable—they’ll quit in lambing time because the baby’s teething; they’ll leave at a moment’s notice when a letter comes that their wife wants to see them; their mind isn’t on their work and they’re restless and discontented. I knew you were married the first time I found you with your sheep behind instead of ahead of you.”
“You can’t understand the feelin’s of a fambly man away from home.” He rolled his eyes sentimentally. The subject was one which was dear to the uxorious herder. He pulled out the tremolo stop in his voice and quavered: “You feel like you’re goin’ ’round with nothin’ inside of you—a empty shell—or a puff-ball with the puff out of it. You got a feelin’ all the time like somethin’s pullin’ you.” He looked so hard towards Nebraska that he all but toppled. “Somethin’ here,” he laid a hand on his heart, approximately, “like a plaster drawin’. Love,” eloquently, “changes your hull nature. It makes lambs out o’ roughnecks and puts drunks on the wagon. It turns you kind and forgivin’ and takes the fight out o’ you. It makes you—”