Homer was a piker, even when he made bets with himself.  And the short of it was I sent a man that didn’t hate children over to Bert’s and kept Homer on the place here.

He stayed three months and said it was heaven, account of not having them unnecessary evils on the place that would squirm round a man’s legs and feel of his hair and hide round corners and peek at him and whisper about him.  Then I changed foremen and Scott Humphrey, the new one, brought three towheads with him of an age to cause Homer the anguish of the damned, which they done on the first day they got here by playing that he was a horse and other wild animals, and trying to pull the rest of his hair out.

He come in and cut himself out of my life the day after, shaking his head and saying he couldn’t think what the world was coming to.  As near as I could make him, his idea was that the world was going to be swamped with young ones if something wasn’t done about it, like using squirrel poison or gopher traps.

I felt like I wanted to cuff him up to a peak and knock the peak off; but I merely joked and said it was too bad his own folks hadn’t come to think that way while he could still be handled easy.  I also warned him it was going to be hard to find a job without more or less children on the outskirts, because ours was a growing state.  He said there must be a few sane people left in the world.  And, sure enough, he gets a job over to the Mortimers’—­Uncle Henry and Aunt Mollie being past seventy and having nothing to distress Homer.

Of course the secret of this scoundrel’s get-away from Idaho had got round the valley, making him a marked man.  It was seen that he was a born flirt, but one who retained his native caution even at the most trying moments.  Here and there in the valley was a hard-working widow that the right man could of consoled, and a few singles that would of listened to reason if properly approached; and by them it was said that Homer was a fiend for caution.  He would act like one of them that simply won’t take no for an answer—­up to a certain point.  He would seem to be going fur in merry banter, but never to words that the law could put any expensive construction on.  He would ride round to different ranches and mingle at dances and picnics, and giggle and conduct himself like one doomed from the cradle to be woman’s prey—­but that was all.

Funny how he’d escaped through the years, him having apparently the weak and pliant nature that makes the ideal husband, and having reached the time of life when he was putting sheep dip on his hair where the lining shone through on top.  But so it was.  And his views on children had also become widely known.  Mothers used to grab up their youngest ones when he’d go into the post office down at Kulanch or meet one on the road.  He made no hit at all with such views among them that had learned better.  Still there was hopeful ones that thought he might be made to take a joke sooner or later, and the fact that he was known to save his wages and had a nice little stake laid by didn’t work against him any with such parties as might have a chance to be swept off their feet by him in a mad moment.