“A girl’s argument,” remarked Dan Happersett in a lull of talk, “don’t have to be very weighty to fit any case.  Anything she does is justifiable.  That’s one reason why I always kept shy of women.  I admit that I’ve toyed around with some of them; have tossed my tug on one or two just to see if they would run on the rope.  But now generally I keep a wire fence between them and myself if they show any symptoms of being on the marry.  Maybe so I was in earnest once, back on the Trinity.  But it seems that every time that I made a pass, my loop would foul or fail to open or there was brush in the way.”

“Just because you have a few gray hairs in your head you think you’re awful foxy, don’t you?” said Uncle Lance to Dan.  “I’ve seen lots of independent fellows like you.  If I had a little widow who knew her cards, and just let her kitten up to you and act coltish, inside a week you would he following her around like a pet lamb.”

“I knew a fellow,” said Nancrede, lighting his pipe with a firebrand, “that when the clerk asked him, when he went for a license to marry, if he would swear that the young lady—­his intended—­was over twenty-one, said:  ‘Yes, by G—­, I’ll swear that she’s over thirty-one.’”

At the next pause in the yarning, I inquired why a wild turkey always deceived itself by hiding its head and leaving the body exposed.  “That it’s a fact, we all know,” volunteered Uncle Lance, “but the why and wherefore is too deep for me.  I take it that it’s due to running to neck too much in their construction.  Now an ostrich is the same way, all neck with not a lick of sense.  And the same applies to the human family.  You take one of these long-necked cowmen and what does he know outside of cattle.  Nine times out of ten, I can tell a sensible girl by merely looking at her neck.  Now snicker, you dratted young fools, just as if I wasn’t talking horse sense to you.  Some of you boys haven’t got much more sabe than a fat old gobbler.”

“When I first came to this State,” said June Deweese, who had been quietly and attentively listening to the stories, “I stopped over on the Neches River near a place called Shot-a-buck Crossing.  I had an uncle living there with whom I made my home the first few years that I lived in Texas.  There are more or less cattle there, but it is principally a cotton country.  There was an old cuss living over there on that river who was land poor, but had a powerful purty girl.  Her old man owned any number of plantations on the river—­generally had lots of nigger renters to look after.  Miss Sallie, the daughter, was the belle of the neighborhood.  She had all the graces with a fair mixture of the weaknesses of her sex.  The trouble was, there was no young man in the whole country fit to hold her horse.  At least she and her folks entertained that idea.  There was a storekeeper and a young doctor at the county seat, who it seems took turns calling on her.  It looked like it was going to be a close race.  Outside of these two there wasn’t a one of us who could touch her with a twenty-four-foot fish-pole.  We simply took the side of the road when she passed by.