“You talk like a book I read oncet, ma’am. It was full of maximuns.”
“We’ll put up a herd and trail it! I’ll go along! We’ll be utterly broke—or else we’ll win!”
“You can’t go along, Miss Taisie. No woman could.”
“You make things right hard for yore segundo, Miss Taisie.”
“Jim! Jim! Don’t talk that way! Don’t you think I know? Isn’t all this hard for me too? But if we have luck I’ll make it easier for you-all.”
“You’re just a girl, Miss Taisie. Let’s get married first, huh? I don’t mean me. How about you and Del?”
The girl rose, a native imperiousness in her gesture.
“Oh, all right, all right,” sighed Nabours. “But maybe you’ll leave some things to me?”
The old range man rose and spread his hands.
“Miss Taisie,” said he, “fire me! I’m the damnedest liar in Texas!”
“I am. I been lying to you. You ain’t got no cows left, hardly. Our range has been combed and skinned; for two years it’s been going on—I don’t know how long before. You ain’t got no sixty-five nor fifty thousand cows. You’re lucky if you can put up a herd of four thousand. We’ve all lied to you. We couldn’t tell you the truth. Ma’am, this outfit would all lay down and die for you. They’d do almost anything but tell you the truth. We couldn’t do that. We didn’t have the nerve.”
“No, ma’am. Some gang’s at work in here, and north and west of here—far north as Palo Pinto. We’ve been away, enduring the war and after the war. We’re all broke, us Texans. But in Austin is plenty people ain’t broke none a-tall. We don’t know nothing, can’t prove nothing. All I say is, in Austin is plenty people ain’t broke a-tall.”
“I don’t say out loud what I do mean. All I know is, our range is skinned; and I know we’re up against a strong game. That’s why, ma’am, looking for the best of Del Sol and what yore paw meant for her, and looking for yore own good interests, too, I been advising you to get married. That’d simple up a lot of things.
“You see, then we could settle down and raise cows. We could build up the range again. They ain’t going to be so brash about things when they know they’s a real man in charge of Del Sol. But a orphant is easy picking for a man like Rudabaugh and his gang of carpetbagging thieves.”
“I shore do. In Austin, we don’t know what’s going on. In office and out, there’s a new gang in there. They’re organized fer to steal this here whole state, lock, stock and barrel. They don’t stop at nothing. They allow the war ain’t never done; that us Texans ain’t never surrendered; that Lee’s still a enemy; and that all this state is fair picking fer men that wasn’t never borned nor raised in Texas, orphants and all. They got wide idees, yes. But they ain’t idees that was borned in Texas, ma’am.”