"Oh, you can't understand it. If you only knew what lyin' an' disobedience sometimes does, you wouldn't talk so calm about it, neither. The' ain't nothin' I wouldn't do for Barbara—except see her get started wrong. You're different from the rest, some way, an' she thinks more of you than the others. That's one reason why I give you a wider circle to range in, an' why I give you foreman's pay for odd-job work—"
"Now if you think 'at I don't earn all you're payin' me," sez I—but he broke in: "If I didn't think I wouldn't pay it," sez he.
"I can go down to the Lion Head any time I want an' get more'n you're payin' me," sez I.
"I can pay you as much as any man in the West," sez he.
"You couldn't hire me at all if it wasn't for Barbie," sez I.
"An' I wouldn't hire you at all if it wasn't for her," he snaps. "You can do the right thing at the right time better'n any other man I ever had; but you're the contrariest man to work with on the job. You're allus flyin' up, an' you'd talk back if your throat was cut."
"I'm free," sez I, "an' what's more, I know it. The' ain't no law ever been framed up yet 'at can herd me in with the cows, an' I don't never intend to act like a cow. I'm man to man wherever I am, an' a lot o' you fellers with big outfits are beginnin' to forget that proposition; but I don't forget it, an'—"
"Well, for heaven's sake," he yells, "I ain't tryin' to put a bit in your mouth; though I must confess if I had my way about it, I'd like to put a quart o' bran there sometimes. What I'm tryin' to do is to come to an understandin' about the child."
"Hasn't she gone to school every day this term?" sez I.
"There's another thing," sez he. "When I told you to give that schoolmaster a rawhidin', you wouldn't do it."