s a hard position to make good in a new country.
After his money had built the schoolhouse, they refused to elect him
one o' the trustees; said it might lead to one-man control. Still,
Jabez wasn't no blind worshiper of the law, an' when he found that
they'd put a rope on him, he just sidles in an' asserts himself. It was
easy enough to convince a teacher that the trustees was boss; but when
Jabez began to get impatient, the school-teacher generally emigrated a
little. Then they put a cinch on him for true. They hired a woman
teacher. When it came to bluffin' a woman teacher, Jabez got
tongue-handled so bad that once did him for all time to come.

But the' wasn't any difference of opinion when it came to Barbie. The'
wasn't a man on the place who wasn't willin' to stretch a neck for her.
She knew 'em all by name an' used to tease 'em an' contrairy 'em; but
she never hid behind bein' the boss's daughter. Any time they scored,
she paid, an' that was the thing that made 'em worship her. She had
changed a lot in the five years I'd been away; not only in size, in
fact, that was the least noticed in her; but she had more thinkin'
spells.

It used to be that she made up to every one right from the start; but
now she was a little shy at first, especially with Easterners.
Easterners generally are about as tantalizin' as it's possible for a
human to get, but she had never minded 'em much until this summer. Now
she'd answer the first twenty-five or thirty fool questions polite
enough, but after that she got purty frosty an' would ask 'em some
questions herself that would straighten 'em up right short in their
tracks. About every time an Easterner would pull out I noticed that
she'd put a little wider heal on the bottom of her skirt.

But she was purty much the same with me, an' after the spring round-up
she used to keep me ridin' with her most o' the time when the' wasn't
anything actually demandin' my attention. It was just about this time
that Jabez hired a new man by the name of Bill Andrews. He was about as
near speak-less as a man ever gets, an' he wasn't much liked by the
rest of us; but he was a hard worker an' a good, all-around hand, so he
got along all right.

When the fall round-up came, Barbie surprised every one by sayin' she
wasn't goin' to do any of the ridin', but would wait until after we'd
got all the sortin' out an' brandin' done, an' would then come out an'
see the whole herd in a bunch. The' wasn't a thing