e than I generally wore. I didn't have mach call to go anywhere,
an' I sat there on my old pony, wonderin' whether or not it paid to be
game.

If my mother had been alive, jest at that point would have been where
the West would have lost the benefit of my personal supervision--but
then if my mother had lived I shouldn't never 'a' left home. I stood a
stepmother six months out o' respect to my Dad, but I wouldn't 'a'
stood that one a year--well, anyway, not unless I'd been chained an'
muzzled.

It's a funny thing to me how a man can drink an' fight an' carry on for
a year at a clip an' then all of a sudden feel a hurtin' somewhere
inside that nothin' wouldn't help but a little pettin'. He knows
doggone well 'at there ain't none comin' to him, so he hides it by
cuttin' up a little worse than usual but it's there, an' Gee! but it
does rest heavy when it comes. Why, take me even now when the' wouldn't
nothin' but a grizzly bear have the nerve to coddle me, an' yet week
before last I felt so blue an' solitary 'at I couldn't 'a' told to save
me whether I was homesick or whether it was only 'cause the beans was a
little sour.

I sat there on the old pony a good long time, an' then I heaved a sigh
'at made me swell out like an accordion, an' headed back to the valley
trail. When I turned around, there, standin' in the trail before me
with a streak down each cheek, stood Barbie.

"Ya ain't goin', are ya?" sez she.

"I got to go, honey," sez I.

"Ain't ya never comin' back?" asked she.

"Oh, I'll come back some day, ridin' a big black hoss with silver
trimmed leather--an' what shall I bring little Barbie?" sez I, tryin'
to be gay.

"Just bring me yourself, Happy, that's all the present I want. I love
you because you're the handsomest man in the world"--yes, it was me she
meant, only o' course that was some years ago an' the child was
unthinkable young--"an' cause you tell me the nicest stories, an' train
pintos, an'--an' I'm goin' to marry you when I grow up."

"Marry me, kitten?" sez I, laughin' free an' natural this time. "Why,
bless your heart, where did you ever hear o' marriage?"

"My Daddy tells me of my mother, an' what a beautiful lady she was, an'
how happy they were together--an' I'm goin' to marry you when you come
back."

"Well, Barbie," sez I right soberly, "you be true to me an' I'll be
true to you, an' now we'll kiss to bind the promise."

So I lifted her to my saddle an' kissed her. "How did you ge