“He’s the kind of a feller—your Old Man—that don’t have to holler his head off to git himself heard. They’d listen in any man’s country when he talks. He don’t talk much, but what he says goes—the kind that can always finish what he starts.
“He’s six feet, and there wasn’t any man in the country could handle him in those days. I’ve seen him throw a three-year-ol' steer like you’d slap over a kid. He was easy and quiet, commonly, like one of them still deep rivers that slip along peaceful till somethin’ gits in its way. The patientest feller I ever see with dumb brutes, and a patience that wasn’t hardly human, even with folks. But when he did break loose—well, them that thought he was 'harmless’ and went too far on account of it never made the same mistake twice.”
He continued with evident relish:
“That’s where he fooled her—Isabelle—she didn’t read him right. She thought he was ‘soft’ because she had her way with him.”
“They were married, Pete?”
“Married, right enough—he never thought any other way about her. She was all-the-same angel to him,” he grinned. “She never was straight—we all knowed that but him, but she was slick, and she was swingin’ her throwrope for him in about a week after they brought her in from the Middle West to teach the school in that district. Anybody that said a word ag'in’ her to him would have gone to the hospital. So he went ahead and married her—while she laffed at him to his own hired men.
“If he’d worked her over with a quirt about onct a month, instead of wonderin’ what he could do for her next, he might have had her yet.
“If he made a door-mat out of hisself before, it was worse after you come. He was the greatest hand for little things that ever I see—colts, kittens, calves, puppies and a baby! He walked the floor carrying you on a pillow for fear you’d break.
“It was too slow for Isabelle—that life—and only one man to fetch and carry for her. We used to make bets among ourselves as to how long ’twould last, and the short-time man won out. She liked ’em ‘tough,’ she said—no white-collared gents for her; and she got what she was lookin’ for when she throwed in with Freighter Sam that hauled supplies from the railroad to the ranch.
“They skipped out between daylight and dark and made as clean a getaway as ever was pulled off. But where she made her big mistake was takin’ you along. If it hadn’t been for that, he wouldn’t a-walked a half mile to bring her back. Twenty-four hours put ten years on him, and he never squeaked. But if he’d caught that freighter he’d took him by the heels and swung him like you’d knock a rabbit’s brains out agin a post.