"Yes; you do, too, know how I figure that—you know there ain't but one way I could figure it. You stay with me till hell freezes under both of us; and I don't want to hear no more talk about you going West or nowheres else."
Folkses' Adam's apples bothers sometimes.
"We built this brand together," says he, "and what right you got to shake it now?" says he; me not being able now to talk much. "We rode this range, every foot of it, together, and more than once slept under the same saddle blanket. I've trusted you to tally a thousand head of steers for me a half dozen times a year. You've had the spring rodeo in your hands ever since I can remember. You've been one-half pa of that kid. Has times changed so much that you got a right to talk the way you're talking?"
"You're going back into the States, though, Colonel," says I. "They turn men out there when they're forty—and I'll never see forty again. I read in the papers that forty is the dead line back there."
"It ain't in Wyoming," says he.
"We won't be in Wyoming no more, there," says I.
He set and looked off across the range toward the Gunsight Gap, at the head of the river, and I could see him get white under his freckles. He was game, but he was scared.
"We can't help it, Curly," says he. "We've raised the girl between us and we've got to stick all the way through. You've been my foreman here and you got to be my foreman there in the city. We'll land there with a few million dollars or so and I reckon we'll learn the game after a while."
"I'd make a hell of a vallay, wouldn't I, Colonel?" says I.
"I didn't ast you to be no vallay for me," says he. "I ast you to be my foreman—you know damn well what I mean."