"Have you got a room in there like a ranch?" says he.
"Exacty like our old ranch," says I. "It's the main room out of the old Circle Arrow Ranch."
"Could she, now—would she help teach a fellow how to rope a drowning person?" says he. "That's what she done. She's a corker, ain't she?"
"She shore is," says I. "Her own folks mostly reserves the right to say that, though."
"I beg pardon," says he, and he got red again. "I know where I belong."
"Just kind of keep on knowing where you belong and where she belongs, son," says I—"it's two different propositions. I trust, my good man," says I to him, "that you understand I'm the foreman of the ranch."
"Don't it beat the world," says he to me after a while—us standing there still talking though he was wet as a rat—"how things is run? Sometimes it seems like we can't help ourselfs, and we all get into the wrong places trying to get into the right ones. Now I'd like to thank that lady; but I can't. She's wonderfully beautiful, isn't she—your mistress? I say now, Curly, you thank her for me, won't you?"
I felt rather savage towards anybody coming from the Wisner side of the fence, but someway this fellow was so decent, and he evident meant to be so square, that I couldn't hardly feel no way but friendly to him.
"You've been with your folks quite a while, ain't you?" says I after a while.
"Oh, yes; I suppose I'm kind of useful in the scheme some ways or they'd tie a can to me."