"What did you say?" I sez.
"I didn't know what to say," sez Jabez. "She looked different from any way she had ever looked before, and after a minute I sez, 'No, Barbara, I don't think you had better ask me, an' I don't think you had better think of it any more.' Don't you think I did right?"
"No," sez I, "you did not. You simply side-stepped; you wilted under fire, an' she hates a coward as much as you do. Why didn't you face it right then?"
"Happy," he sez, an' his voice wrung my heart, "the' 's things she'll have to know sometime, but she ain't old enough to know 'em yet." He stopped, an' his face grew hard as stone when he went on. "But the' 's some things that she never can know, an' I don't want her to even learn that there are such things. That's why you have to find out what's on her mind."
"Now you know, Jabez, that I have my own ideas on what I have to do; but you tell me what kind o' things there are that she mustn't ever learn, an' maybe I'll see your way of it."
Jabez looked down at the ground, an' the sweat broke out on his forehead before he answered me. When he did the' wasn't a trace of friendliness in his tone. "You have done a heap for me, Happy, and if there's anything in the money line that you think I owe you, why, name it an' it's yours; but you can see for yourself that we can't go on this way. I haven't asked you to do anything unreasonable and you have refused point blank. I don't intend to explain myself to one of my own men, and I don't intend to have an argument with him every time I want anything done my way. This is my ranch and as long 's my own way suits me, that's the only man it has to suit."
"Yes, you own this ranch," sez I; "but you don't own the earth, so I'll move on."
"I haven't fired you," sez Jabez. "You're welcome to work here as long as you want to; but you'll have to be like the other men from this on. You've been like one of the family so long 'at we don't pull together any more, and so if you stay I'll have to send you out with the riding gangs."
I looked into his face and laughed, though even then I was sorry for him. He led a lonely life, an' I knew 'at he'd miss me; but we was both as we was, so I rolled up my stuff, loaded up Starlight, an' said good-bye to little Barbie. That was the hard part of it. She didn't cry when I told her I was goin'—that would 'a' been too girlish-like for her; she just breathed hard an' jerky for a couple o' minutes while we looked in opposite directions, an' then she said, "How'll you come back next time, Happy? It's over three years ago since you left that other time, an' you came back just as you said, ridin' on a black hoss with silver trimmed leather. How'll you come back next time?"
"I don't know, Barbie," I said, "but I'll sure come back, true to you."