Sewell drawed his breath in, deep. (Look out when a man takes up air that-a-way: Somethin’s shore a-comin’!) “Forty a month!” he says. “Forty a month! That just about keeps you in ca’tridges! Forty a month!–and you without a square foot of land, ’r a single, solitary horned critter, ’r more’n a’ Injun’s soogin’ ’twixt you and the floor! Do y’ think you can take that little baby gal of mine into a blank shack that ain’t got a stick of anythin’ in it, and turn her loose of a Monday, like a Chink, to do the wash?”
“Now, ease up, boss,” I says. “I reckon I think almost as much of Mace as you do. And I’m figgerin’ to make her life just as happy as I can.”
Wal, then he walked up and down, up and down (this all happened out by the calf-corral), and blowed and blowed and blowed. Said that him and his daughters had allus made the Bar Y ranch-house seem like home to the Sewell punchers, and they was men in the outfit just low-down mean enough to take advantage of it. Said he’d raised his gal like a lady–and now she was goin’ to be treated like a squaw.
If it’d ’a’ been any other ole man but Mace’s, I’d ’a’ made him swaller ev’ry one of them words ’fore ever he got ’em out. As it stood, a-course, I couldn’t. So I just helt my lip till he was over his holler. (By now, y’ savvy, I’d went through enough–from sayin’ the wrong thing back when Paw Sewell ’r his daughter was a-talkin’–t’ learn me that the best I could do was just t’ keep my blamed mouth shut.)
Pretty soon, I says, “You spoke of land, Mister Sewell,” I says, politer’n pie, and as cool as if I had the hull of Oklahomaw up my sleeve. (Been a beefsteak, y’ savvy, fer him to git the idear he had me anxious any.) “Wal, how much land do you figger out that you’ next son-in-law oughta have?”
He looked oneasy again, got red some, and begun workin’ his nose up and down like a rabbit. “Aw, thunder!” he says, “what you astin’ that fer? A man–any man–when he marries, oughta have a place big enough so’s his chickens can kick up the dirt ’round his house without its fallin’ into somebody else’s yard. Out here, where the hull blamed country’s land–just land fer miles–a man oughta have a piece, say–wal, as big as–as that Andrews chunk of mine.” (When Billy married Rose, Sewell bought over the Andrews’ ranch, y’ savvy. Wanted it ’cause it laid ’twixt hisn and town, and had a fine water-hole fer the stock. But a good share of the hunderd acres in it wasn’t much to brag on–just crick-bottom.)
“The Andrews place?” I says, smooth and easy. “Wal, Sewell, I’ll keep that in mind. And, now, you spoke of cows––”
“Fifty ’r so,” puts in the ole man, quick, like as if he was ’shamed of hisself. (His ranges is plumb alive with cattle.) “A start, Cupid,–just a start.”
Wal, a-course, whatever he said went with me. If he’d ’a’ advised walkin’ on my hands as far as Albuquerque, you’d ’a’ saw me a-startin’, spurs in the air!
“So long,” I says then, and walked off. When I turned round, a little bit later, Sewell was standin’ there yet, haid down, shoulders hunched over, arms a-hangin’ loose at his sides, and all his fingers twitchin’. As I clumb on to that pinto bronc of mine and steered her outen the gate, I couldn’t help but think that, all of a suddent, seems like, the boss looked a mighty lot older.