“Uh-huh,” he sighs, “she sure does. I don’t know how she can, but she does.”
“I don’t know either, Muley, but it takes all kinds of folks to make a world.”
“I been thinking of marriage for a long time,” he sighs, “I been afraid to ask her, but today she up and kissed me, and that settled it, Hen. Funny what a little kiss will do thataway. It makes me desperate.”
“It would have done the same to me, Muley. If a girl like her kissed me I’d likely turn outlaw. You aim to go to Chicago with that train of cows?”
“I can’t, Hen. I hope the old man don’t ask me to. You going?”
“No. Telescope and Chuck are going, but the old man wants me to act as foreman while they’re gone—he’s going, too. I’ll ask him to let you stay, if you want me to, Muley.”
“I’d love you like a brother, Hen,” he sighs, “I want to be near her.”
That’s Muley. Being of a poetical temperament he has to confide in folks. If me or Telescope or Chuck got kissed by a lady we’d cherish the memory to our graves—unless it was Susie, and think of it only when alone.
I ain’t so bad to look upon, and a lady couldn’t be censured for giving me a kiss, but when it comes to Telescope and Chuck—well, I suppose they’ll eventually marry beautiful women.
Telescope is built like a bed-slat, and orates openly that he’s a twig of the Tolliver tree, which flourished and bought colored help in Kentucky before the plans were drawn for the pyramids. Chuck Warner don’t claim nothing, and don’t get sore if you subtract from his ancestry. He was born west of the Arizona line, and if he descended from anybody it was Ananias.