"How about Mis' Burr an' her daughter?"
"I said as a general rule. Like I told yuh once before, Mis' Burr an' Dorothy are real ladies, all silk an' several yards wide. A gent can talk to them just like folks. An' Dorothy can have my ranch an' every cayuse on it, includin' my mules, any time she wants. Nothin's too good for that little girl."
"She's shore a winner."
"She's all o' that. Now there's a girl that'll make a ace-high wife. She wouldn't use no axe-handle. She'd understand a gent's failin's, she would, an' she'd break him off 'em so nice an' easy he wouldn't know nothin' about it. Yes, sir, the party that gets Dorothy Burr needn't worry none 'bout bein' happy."
"I guess now there ain't no party real shore-enough fit to make her a husband."
"There ain't. No, sir, yuh can bet there ain't. But she'll marry some no-account tinhorn—them kind always does. Say, why don't you make up to her?"
"Well, I would," said Loudon, gravely, "only yuh see it wouldn't be proper. I ain't a no-account tinhorn."
"You ain't, but O'Leary is."
"It ain't gone as far as that!"
"Yuh never can tell how far anythin's gone with a woman. Yuh never can tell nothin' about her till it happens. She's a heap unexpected, a female is. Now I don't say as Dorothy'd marry yuh, Tom. Yuh may not be her kind o' feller at all. But yo're a sight better'n Pete O'Leary."