men to rope it; what does that mean?"

"It means that when a man tells me that hell can't hide me from his
wrath, I 'm free to consider myself foot loose. A man don't want to
slaughter none of his own hands, an' if it should be that any one
feels called upon to go after my hide, I don't want to feel that the
time I 'm wastin' in takin' care o' that hide rightfully belongs to
another man who is payin' for it. Therefore I have quit. I'm goin'
to rope the pinto for Barbie, but I wouldn't do it for you, an' when
I get back I'll call around for what's comin' to me."

"Well, go an' be hanged! You always was the most obstinate, high-
headed, bull-intellected thin-skin 'at ever drew down top wages for
punchin' cows. You're nothin' more than a kid, an' yet you swell
around an' expect a man--"

"Well, I don't expect nothin' from you, ceptin' my wages," sez I.

"You go to Jericho, will you!" snaps Jabez. "You don't need to think
that I'd try to argue any man on earth into workin' for me. I can
get an army o' riders as good or better than you--but the gel likes
you, Happy, an'--"

"An' that's why I 'm goin' after the pinto," sez I, an' I flopped
onto a pony an' sailed out to a little glen in the foothills where I
knew I 'd find him, an' as soon as I had towed him back to the
corral I put my saddle on the old beast I had rode there an' set
off.

Just as I rode around the edge o' the corral, ol' man Judson stood