The' ain't no rules for women anyhow, 'cause their hearts won't never surrender to their heads; when they do, they ain't all woman. Well, yes, there is one rule 'at 's safe for a man to foller In dealin with woman, an' that is that when a woman's in love, she 's in love all over. Sometimes a man's in love up to his pocket-book, sometimes up to his appetite, an' sometimes up to his heart, but he's mighty seldom in love all over. If nothin' else stays dry he's generally able to take care of his head, but with a woman everything goes; so I'm purty tol'able sure that away back at the beginnin' it was love 'at drove ol' Monody out of her own sex down into ours.
When the news spread abroad 'at the man who had killed Bill Brophy without a weapon had cashed in, the neighbors gathered from ninety miles around, and we sure gave Monody the rip-snortin'est funeral ever seen in those parts. We didn't say nothin' about him not really bein' a man, an' though I reckon 'at every feller there knew of it, the' wasn't a single one of 'em spoke of it—so we didn't have no trouble at all.
He lies on a little knoll about a mile to the north of the ranch house. Up back of him ol' Mount Savage stands guard an' fights off the roughest of the storms; while the soft winds from the south steal gently up a little cut in the rocks an' seem to circle about him, whisperin' secrets of countries far away. If the' 's a single bird in Wyoming, you can find it hoppin' about his narrow bed or singin' in the oak tree 'at stands above him, spreadin' out its branches like a priest givin' the blessin'. Winter or summer, Monody's grave is the quietest, peacefullest, purtiest spot 'at lies outdoors, as if the old Earth had repented of the way it had treated him, and was tryin' to make it up to him now.
Take it in winter when the' 's a clean sheet o' soft, white snow over everything, an' I like to go out an' stand on another little knoll about a half mile this side. The last speck of light in the valley comes through a narrow cleft an' falls on Monody's grave. As the sun sinks lower an' lower the crimson glory on the soft fleecy snow seems to come up out of the grave an' climb the black shadow of the mountain, like—but pshaw, I reckon it'd be a mighty tame sight to ol' Monody himself.
I never speak of him, an' I never think of him, as anything but a man. He lived like a man, God knows he died like a man; and on the little stone at his head the' ain't nothin' carved except just—Monody, a Man.
CHAPTER SIX
THE RACE
It was mighty pleasant back at the Diamond Dot after things got settled again. Barbie had become a curious little trick with a way of doin' strange things in a sober old-fashioned manner like as if she was a hundred years of age, but was tryin' to hide it.
She was more like Jabez too, which give me a heap of amusement, seein' which one was goin' to win when they straddled a question. Barbie wasn't sassy, not at all; she just didn't seem able to savvy that a few small matters, like age an' parentage an' ownin' the ranch, gave Jabez a sort of a majority vote, as you might say, on all questions. No, Barbie couldn't seem to get callous to this, an' she fought out all differences of opinion from the mere facts o' the case, an' I got to do Jabez the justice of admittin' that he never retreated behind his authority until after he'd been well licked in the open; an' unless it was a mighty important question he took his lickin' like a man. Barbie was game about it too, an' when she got the worst of a fair fight she never put up a howl; but when she had won in the open it used to grind her something fierce to be told point blank that she had to do such an' so, "'Cause she was a girl."