Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/183

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married man can't rob his wife, nor a married woman can't rob her husband. What belongs to one belongs to the other. If I'd 'a' knew the law then I'd 'a' told her to go to the doodle."

"I don't know, but I expect Riley's right. It sounds like he ought to be right, anyhow. So if you can raise the wind you'll strike for St. Joe again?"

"You watch me. Ain't that a h—a dickens of a mess for a man to have to eat and call it a breakfast? Hog grease and beans! I'm so fed up on hog I leak lard when I git a bug in my eye. Yeah, she said she was goin' to make a sheepman out of me. Never expected I'd be as good as that warp-faced feller she had ahead of me—I wish she had him now, I wish to the mighty he'd raise up from the dead and come back—but she'd make a kind of one out of me or bust her hame-strings a tryin'. She can bust 'em, and she can bust herself, wide open, for all the sheepman she'll ever make out of me!"

"How long does she calculate it'll take, or did she say?"

"She said after I'd run around with a bunch of stews two years I'd begin to see some sense, and then maybe she could trust me. You can see how she trusts me now—not even a sheep-wagon to hang up in at night like them hired herders have, and no grub but that you see there in that blame sack. She's a-scairt if I had a wagon I might hitch myself up to it and pull out, I guess. Well, I wouldn't try to give her the dodge that way any more. When I go next time I'll go with some money funds in my jeans. I may be green, but I ain't as simple as I look. I've got a line on something, and