“I tole Mike to give me ten minutes’ lee-way ’fore he played that tune. But he must ’a’ waited a hull hour.” And then, with the mouth-organ goin’ at the bunk-house (t’ keep the ole man listenin’, y’ savvy, and make him fergit t’ look fer Mace), we rambled north byside the ditch, holdin’ each other’s hand as we walked, like two kids. And the ole moon, it smiled down on us, awful friendly like, and we smiled back at the moon.
Wal, when we figgered that Mike ’d blowed hisself plumb outen breath, we started home again. And under the cottonwoods, the little gal reached up her two arms t’ me; and they wasn’t nothin’ but love in them sweet, grey eyes.
“You ain’t never liked nobody else, honey?”
“No–just you, Alec!–dear Alec!”
“Same here, Macie,–and this is fer keeps.”
Wal, ’most ev’ry night it was just like that. And the follerin’ day, mebbe I wouldn’t know whether I was a-straddle of a hoss, drivin’ steers, ’r a-straddle of a steer, drivin’ hosses. And it’s a blamed good thing my bronc savvied how t’ tend to business without me doin’ much!
Then, mebbe, I’d be ridin’ line. Maud ’d go weavin’ away up the long fence that leads towards Kansas, and at sundown we’d reach the first line-shack. And there, with the little bronc a-pickin’, and my coffee a-coolin’ byside me on a bench, I’d sit out under the sky and watch the moon–alone. Mebbe, when I got home, it ’d be ole man Sewell’s lodge-night, so he’d start fer town ’long about seven o’clock, and Mace and me ’d have the porch to ourselves–the side-porch, where the sun-flowers growed. But the next night, we’d meet by the ditch again, and the next, and the next. Aw! them first happy days at the ole Bar Y!
And I reckon it was just ’cause we was so turrible happy that we got interested in Bergin’s case–Mace and me both. (Next t’ Hairoil, Bergin’s my best friend, y’ savvy.) Figgerin’ on how t’ fix things up fer him–speakin’ matreemonal–brung us two closter t’gether, and showed me what a dandy little pardner she was a-goin’ t’ make.
But I want t’ say right here that we wasn’t re-sponsible fer the way that case of hisn turned out–and neither was no other livin’ soul. No, ma’am. The hull happenstance was the kind that a feller cain’t explain.
It begun when I’d been out at the Sewell ranch about two weeks. (I disremember the exac’ day, but that don’t matter.) I’d rid in town fer somethin’, and was a-crossin’ by the deepot t’ git it, when I ketched sight of Bergin a-settin’ on the end of a truck,–all by hisself. Now, that was funny, ’cause they wasn’t a man in Briggs City but liked George Bergin and would ’a’ hoofed it a mile to talk to him. “What’s skew-gee?” I says to myself, and looked at him clost; then,–“Cæsar Augustus Philabustus Hennery Jinks!” I kinda gasped, and brung up so suddent that I bit my cigareet clean in two and come nigh turnin’ a somerset over back’ards.