"Cloud-boats sailing sunny seas--is that original,
or have I cribbed it from some honest-to-goodness poet? Blue, if fate
hadn't made a cowpuncher of me, I'd be chewing up lead-pencils trying
to find a rhyme for alfalfa, maybe. And where would you be, you old
skate? If the Louise of me had been developed at the expense of the
Billy of me, and I'd taken to making battenburg doilies with
butterflies in the corners, and embroidering corset covers till I put
my eyes out, and writing poetry on Sundays when mommie wouldn't let me
sew. I wonder if Ward-- Maybe he'd have liked me better if I'd lived
up to the Louise and cut out the Billy part. I'd be home, right now,
asking mommie whether I should use soda or baking-powder to make my
muffins with-- Oh, gracious!" She leaned over and caught a handful of
Blue's slatey mane and tousled it, till he laid his ears flat on his
head and nipped his nose around to show her that his teeth were bared
to the gums. Billy Louise laughed and gave another yank.

"You wish I were an embroidering young lady, do you? Aw, where would
you be, if you didn't have me to devil the life out of you? Well, why
don't you take a chunk out of me, then? Don't be an old bluffer, Blue.
If you want to eat me, why, go to it; only you don't. You're just
a-bluffing. You like to be tousled and you know it; else why do you
tag me all over the place when I don't want you? Huh? That's to pay
you back for jumping that washout when I wasn't looking." A twitch of
the mane here brought Blue's head around again with all his teeth
showing. "And this is for jarring that lovely, weepy song out of me.
You know you hate it; you always do lay back your ears when I sing
that, but--oh, all right--when I sing, then. But you've got to stand
for it. I've been an indigo bag all day long, and I'm going to sing if
I want to. Fate made me a lady cowpunch instead of a poet-ess, and you
can't stop me from singing when I feel it in my system."

She began again with the "Ten-dollar hoss and forty-dollar saddle," and
sang as much of the old trail song as she had ever heard and could
remember, substituting milder expletives now and then and laughing at
herself for doing it, because a self-confessed "lady cowpunch" is after
all hedged about by certain limitations in the matter of both speech
and conduct. She did not sing it all, but she sang enough to last over
a mile of rough going, and she did not have to repeat many verse