was that he was an easy man for a woman to ask. Being asked,
he always served her in a spirit of masculine banter and then went away
as if he had enjoyed the joke. Thus she could be grateful for his
neighborly turn without feeling herself under any painful state of
obligation. Naturally his custom grew. One moment he would be mending
a yoke or plaiting a lash, the next moment he would be clapping himself
on a broncho to outdodge an escaped bull, or dashing up the road to put
out a prairie fire before it reached the stable; he could lift a stove
or drive a nail or spade up a little place for flower seed; he could do
any one of these things in about a minute and then have time to sit
down and have a good neighborly visit. Possibly his familiarity with
cookstove affairs had brought him nearer to woman's point of view. He
looked like a Texas Ranger, and was just as generally useful, but in a
more domestic way. And yet he had been good with a six-shooter. So
times change; and men with them.

Altogether, he might be best described simply as Jonas Hicks; his
position being one that he naturally fell into. And he filled the
position of Jonas Hicks the same as if he were a policeman or a priest
or a fire department. In time of trouble it was only necessary for a
woman to ask. Indeed, his trade with woman grew to such proportions
that he had been obliged, on more than one occasion, to cancel an
engagement with a man in order that he might do something for his wife.
And he stated the case in just about that way.

Chivalry is not entirely a thing of the past. It is a virtue which
grows wild in Texas. When it is domesticated with the ox, and pursues
the even tenor of everyday life, it is a most useful institution.

With all this talk of ours, it is doubtful if we have brought the oxen
a mile on their way. At this point we shall go on ahead.

It will be easy enough to reach the next chapter before he does.

CHAPTER X

Repeatedly, Janet had misjudged her fellow man's motives and had to
correct her theory of him. It was, however, his own fault. He had a
way of going ahead without making explanations. He seemed deficient in
that sort of guile which would prompt a man to forefend suspicion of
his motives, or else he did not think it necessary, or, worse still,
did not care; and so his "high-handedness," as it had at first appeared
to her, took sinister color from her unusual situation and his too easy
advant