I was watchin' up
some experiments with silkworms an' I didn't want to leave 'em. We were
short-handed an' Jabez 'lowed 'at I'd better go. Well, we argued back
an' forth until he finally said that he could take full care o' the
silkworms, an' intimated that my work with 'em wasn't much but pastime,
anyway.

That settled it with me. I helped drive the herd, an' it was the
bitterest weather we'd ever had. The sleet blew in the cow's faces an'
it was simply one long fight. Three o' the boys gave up an' pulled back
to the ranch house, but not me. I don't believe I slept on that drive,
night or day, an' when, the boys finally told Bill Andrews that it
couldn't be done, I told 'em that it could, an' that if any more of
'ern dropped out I'd count it a personal insult. We got 'em there all
right, an' then I rode back to the ranch house.

Jabez had let the silkworms die--an' I told him what I thought of him,
an' pulled out. It was cold weather an' I was travelin' on foot, but it
wasn't cold I was suffer in' from, it was heat.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

IN RETIREMENT

I plugged along through the cold, gettin' hotter an' hotter all the
time, 'cause I didn't want to go away at all. Barbie'd be home in a few
months and I wanted to be there when she came--but I couldn't get over
those silkworms. She was goin' to write somethin' about 'em for some
kind of a paper, an' it meant a good deal to her, an' I had kept a
record of all the projec's she'd written me to do with 'em--only to
have Cast Steel an' flint fool Bill Andrews flounder in with that herd
o' cows.

I piked on over to Danders thinkin' I'd get on a train an' go
somewhere; but on my way there I met the foreman o' the E. Z. outfit
ridin' into town to see if he couldn't pick up a fence-rider. Then I
see old Mrs. Fate nudgin' me in the ribs with her finger again. We was
all down on fences at the Diamond Dot. Jabez said that as far as he was
concerned, he preferred to have his fences mounted on hoss-back, 'cause
they was easiest moved, an' we didn't have a foot o' wire on the place.
I knew that no one would ever think o' me ridin' fence, so I just up
an' spoke for the job. The foreman, Hank Midders was his name, didn't
know me an' he was suspicious of me bein' on foot. "Can you ride?" sez
he.

"I used to could," sez I. "How many days' ridin' does it take to go
around?"

"We don't ride that way," sez he, "we put two men in a camp an' they
ride out fifteen miles an' th