“I guess you thought I spoke a mite short when you asked about Nettie’s wedding yesterday.”

It was true.  She had turned the friendly inquiry with a rather mystifying abruptness.  I murmured politely.  She blew twin jets of smoke from the widely separated corners of her generous mouth and then shrewdly narrowed her gaze to some distant point of narration.

“Yes, sir, I says to her, ‘Woman’s place is the home.’  And what you think she come back with?  That she was going to be a leader of the New Dawn.  Yes, sir, just like that.  Five feet one, a hundred and eight pounds in her winter clothes, a confirmed pickle eater—­pretty enough, even if she is kind of peaked and spiritual looking—­and going to lead the New Dawn.

“Where’d she catch it?  My fault, of course, sending her back East to school and letting her visit the W.B.  Hemingways, Mrs. H. being the well-known clubwoman like the newspapers always print under her photo in evening dress.  That’s how she caught it all right.

“I hadn’t realized it when she first got back, except she was pale and far-away in the eyes and et pickles heavily at every meal—­oh, mustard, dill, sour, sweet, anything that was pickles—­and not enough meat and regular victuals.  Gaunted she was, but I didn’t suspect her mind was contaminated none till I sprung Chester Timmins on her as a good marrying bet.  You know Chet, son of old Dave that has the Lazy Eight Ranch over on Pipe Stone—­a good, clean boy that’ll have the ranch to himself as soon as old Dave dies of meanness, and that can’t be long now.  It was then she come out delirious about not being the pampered toy of any male—­male, mind you!  It seems when these hussies want to knock man nowadays they call him a male.  And she rippled on about the freedom of her soul and her downtrod sisters and this here New Dawn.

“Well, sir, a baby could have pushed me flat with one finger.  At first I didn’ know no better’n to argue with her, I was that affrighted.  ’Why, Nettie Hosford,’ I says, ’to think I’ve lived to hear my only sister’s only child talking in shrieks like that!  To think I should have to tell one of my own kin that women’s place is the home.  Look at me,’ I says—­we was down in Red Gap at the time—­’pretty soon I’ll go up to the ranch and what’ll I do there?” I says.

“‘Well, listen,’ I says, ’to a few of the things I’ll be doing:  I’ll be marking, branding, and vaccinating the calves, I’ll be classing and turning out the strong cattle on the range.  I’ll be having the colts rid, breaking mules for haying, oiling and mending the team harness, cutting and hauling posts, tattooing the ears and registering the thoroughbred calves, putting in dams, cleaning ditches, irrigating the flats, setting out the vegetable garden, building fence, swinging new gates, overhauling the haying tools, receiving, marking, and branding the new two—­year—­old bulls, plowing and seeding grain for our work stock