“Wal, Hairoil,” I says, “I shore am a’ unlucky geezer! Why, d’ you know, I don’t hardly dast go from one room to another these days fer fear I’ll git my lip pinched in the door.”
Hairoil, he clawed thoughtful. “You and the boss had a talk oncet on the marryin’ question,” he begun. “It was out at the Bar Y.” (We was settin’ on a truck at the deepot again, same as that other time.) “A-course, I don’t want t’ throw nothin’ up, but–you tole him then that when it come you’ own time, you wouldn’t have no trouble. Recollect braggin’ that-a-way?”
“Yas,” I answers, meeker’n Moses. “But Hairoil, that was ’fore I met Macie.”
“So it was,” he says. Then, after a minute, “I s’pose nothin’ could keep her in Briggs much longer.”
I shook my haid. “The ole man won’t let her fetch a dud offen the ranch, and so she’s havin’ a couple of dresses made. I figger that when they git done, she’ll–she’ll go.”
“How long from now?”
“About two weeks–accordin’ to what Mollie Brown tole me.”
“Um,” says Hairoil, and went on chawin’ his cud. Fin’lly, he begun again, and kinda like he was feelin’ ’round. “Don’t you think Mace Sewell is took up with the romance part of this singin’ proposition?” he ast. “That’s my idear. And I think that if she was showed that her and you was also a romance, why, she’d give up goin’ to Noo York. Now, it might be possible to–to git her t’ see things right–if they was a little scheme, say.”
I got up. “No, Hairoil,” I says, “no little scheme is a-goin’ t’ be played on Macie. A-course, I done it fer Rose and Billy; but Macie,–wal, Macie is diff’rent. I want t’ win her in the open. And I’ll be jiggered if I stand fer any underhand work.”
“It needn’t t’ be what you’d call underhand,” answers Hairoil.