up,
man! You're dopy."

"No, I ain't," said Wid. "I'm in a perfectly sane, sound and disposin'
mind. You're getting awful sun-burned, but it only makes you
good-lookinger, Miss Annie.

"But now lemme tell you one thing," he went on, "I don't want to see
you making no more eyes at that corporal in there. Plenty of men in
the Army has run away and left three, four wives at home."

"I don't care nothing about no man's past," said Annie. "They all look
alike to me."

"Well, I can't say that about you. Some ways you're a powerful homely
girl. Your hair's gettin' sunburned around the ends like Karen
Jensen's. And your eyes--turn around, won't you, so I kin remember
what color your eyes is. I sort of forgot, but they ain't much. Not
that I care about it. Women is nothing in my young life."

"Huh! you're eighty if you're a day."

"It's the way I got my hair combed."

Extending a strong right arm she pushed him off the end of the saw
horse. He rose, dusting his trousers calmly. "Oh, dear, I didn't
think so much sinfulness could be packed in so young a life! But say,
Annie, what's the use of fooling? I got to tell you the truth about it
sometime. Like on my flour sack: 'Eventual, why not now?' And the
plain, plumb truth is, you're the best as well as the pertiest girl
that ever set a foot on Montana dirt."

Annie's face was turned away now.

"Your hair and eyes and teeth, and your way of talking, and your way of
taking hold of things and making a home--haven't you been making a home
fer all of us people here? I told you I'd have to tell the truth at
last. Besides, I said I was to blame for everything that's gone wrong
here. I was. But I'll give you all I am and all I got to square it,
anyways you like."

"Well, anyways," said Annie Squires, drawing a long breath, "I think if
you took on something, you'd see it through; and you wouldn't pass the
buck if you fell down."

"That's me," said Wid.

"I get you," said Annie.

"You said that to me right out here in broad daylight, in presence of
witnesses, four hens and a dog."

"I said I understood you. That was all."

Wid Gardner turned to her and looked her squarely, in the eyes. "Not
appropry to nothing, neither here nor there, ner bragging none, I'm
able to put up as much hay in a day as any two Mormons in the Two Forks
Valley. In the hay fields of life, it's deeds and not words that
counts. I read that in a book somewheres."

"Say," h