I'm a straight-up cow puncher and nothin' else. That cake? Why, it
come from the Kansas outfit.

"Don't know which one of 'em done it, but it's a honey," he went on.
"Say, she's a foot high, with white stuff a inch high all over. She's
soft around the aidge some, for I stuck my finger intoe it just a
little. We just got it recent and we're night-herdin' it where it's
cool. Cost a even ten dollars. The old lady said she'd make the price
all right, but Mac and me, we sort of sized up things and allowed we'd
drop about a ten in their recep_ti_cle when we come to pay for that
cake. This family, you see, moved intoe the cabin Hank Fogarty and Jim
Bond left when they went away,--it's right acrost the 'royo from Dan
Anderson's office, where we're goin' to eat to-morrer.

"Now, how that woman could make a cake like this here in one of them
narrer, upside-down Mexican ovens--no stove at all--no nothing--say,
that's some like adoptin' yourself to circumstances, ain't it? Why,
man, I'd marry intoe that fam'ly if I didn't do nothing else long as I
lived. They ain't no Mexican money wrong side of the river. No
counterfeit there regardin' a happy home--cuttin' out the bass voice
and givin' 'em a leetle better line of grass and water, eh? Well, I
reckon not. Watch me fly _to_ it."

The idiom of Curly's speech was at times a trifle obscure to the
uneducated ear. I gathered that he believed these newcomers to be of
proper social rank, and that he was also of the opinion that a certain
mending in their material matters might add to the happiness of the
family.

"But say," he began again shortly, "I ain't told you half about our