“Get a dictionary, Ike,” he grins. “Lulu is a Latin word meaning ‘wonderful’. Ain’t she a wonder? Biscuits! Onions! Ike, I wish you’d ask her for her recipe for cooking coffee. I sure admire coffee that I don’t have to chew and what won’t corrode my insides at each meal. I wonder if she contemplates future matrimony? She don’t need to live alone, Ike. Reckon I ain’t beyond matrimonial redemption myself. What do yuh think?”
“If yuh don’t like the way I cook coffee, Magpie, you can cook it yourself. And as far as matrimony and you are concerned, you’d be like a three-legged turtle trying to catch a scared wolf. There ain’t nothing about you to catch the female fancy.
“In the first place, you’re too long. No woman wants to look up a lodge-pole all her life. An occasional glance at your face ain’t going to hurt nobody, but as a steady diet—no!”
“Faces,” he states, “ain’t so much. Brains and companionship counts a heap more. You suffers a heap that-away, Ike. You’re pretty in the face—like a buffalo, and about as companionable as a porkypine, but when it comes to brains you ain’t got a trump. I’ll likely ride her way very soon.”
“Me, too. Likely tomorrow.”
“Yes, and likely yuh won’t, Ike!” he snorts. “You’re working for me. Sabe? You goes where I sends yuh.”
“If you think for a holy minute that I ain’t going to have no leisure time, Magpie, you think again. You get too cocky, old-timer, and I’ll quit or take a vacation. Sabe?”
“Don’t fly off the handle, Ike,” he advises. “Nobody ever said yuh couldn’t have no leisure time. You hops off half-cocked. Also you’re contrary. Did yuh ever hear about the dog what got in the manger? He couldn’t eat the hay, and he wouldn’t let the bronc eat it.”
“If you figures yourself as the bronc in that moral, Magpie, you lose. Your ears are too long, old-timer. Where do yuh get the idea that I can’t get the lady? I made a living before I met you. The only thing I ever done that I was ashamed of was the day I pinned your star on my bosom. You thinks just because you’re a sheriff you’re better than most folks. You didn’t grab any honors when you beat ‘Shep’ Allen for sheriff. He’s blind in one eye and string-halted in both legs. Just let me whisper something to you, Magpie: if you don’t grab some of these cow thieves——”
“Ike, you can desist. I’m doing all that a mortal man can do. If I had a deputy that was worth a cuss I’d——”