“No-o-o, I reckon not, Hen.”
“Just come from there?” I asks.
“Uh-huh. Listen, Hen: can you keep a secret? I know danged well that you can’t, but I got to talk to somebody. Me and Susie’s got it all framed up to get married, but she argues that I got to see Zeb. Susie ain’t of age yet, and Zeb is her guardian, Sabe?
“Believe me, Henry, if I owned a penitentiary I’d hire Zeb. I’d a killed him a long time ago if it wasn’t for Susie, ’cause no sheep-man can tell me where to head in at—dang his old billy-goat face! He’s a darned——”
“Not to change the subject, Muley,” says I, “but why don’t you ask him?”
“I did. Do you think I’d feel this way over futures? You’re darn well right I asked him! Know what he said? He said to me, just like this: ‘Mister Bowles, you keep away from Miss Abernathy. She’s got her sights set higher than a forty-dollar puncher.’
“That’s what he said, Henry, and then I said: ‘Mister Abernathy, you’re tilting that gun for her: let her do her own shooting,” and he said, ‘Your reputation ain’t none too good, and if the Vigilantes ever organize here Susie would be a widow.’ ‘You wouldn’t know it,’ says I, ‘’cause they’d get you first.’
“Muley,” says I, “which one of you shot first?”
“Neither one. I beat him on the draw, but you can’t kill your sweetheart’s guardian. It ain’t ethical, Hen. He told me that any old time I could show enough money to buy out his herd I could have Susie. I told him I wasn’t in the habit of buying either sheep or wives, and he said he knowed that without me telling him. Said that no forty-a-month puncher was ever that foolish.”
“How about Susie—does she love you, Muley?”