contaminated none till I sprung Chester Timmins on her as a good
marrying bet. You know Chet, son of old Dave that has the Lazy Eight
Ranch over on Pipe Stone--a good, clean boy that'll have the ranch to
himself as soon as old Dave dies of meanness, and that can't be long
now. It was then she come out delirious about not being the pampered toy
of any male--_male_, mind you! It seems when these hussies want to knock
man nowadays they call him a male. And she rippled on about the freedom
of her soul and her downtrod sisters and this here New Dawn.

"Well, sir, a baby could have pushed me flat with one finger. At first I
didn' know no better'n to argue with her, I was that affrighted. 'Why,
Nettie Hosford,' I says, 'to think I've lived to hear my only sister's
only child talking in shrieks like that! To think I should have to tell
one of my own kin that women's place is the home. Look at me,' I
says--we was down in Red Gap at the time--'pretty soon I'll go up to the
ranch and what'll I do there?" I says.

"'Well, listen,' I says, 'to a few of the things I'll be doing: I'll be
marking, branding, and vaccinating the calves, I'll be classing and
turning out the strong cattle on the range. I'll be having the colts
rid, breaking mules for haying, oiling and mending the team harness,
cutting and hauling posts, tattooing the ears and registering the
thoroughbred calves, putting in dams, cleaning ditches, irrigating the
flats, setting out the vegetable garden, building fence, swinging new
gates, overhauling the haying tools, receiving, marking, and branding
the new two--year--old bulls, plowing and seeding grain for our work
stock and hogs, breaking in new cooks and blacksmiths'--I was so mad I
went on till I was winded. 'And that ain't half of it,' I says. 'Women's
work is never done; her place is in the home and she finds so much to do
right there that she ain't getting any time to lead a New Dawn. I'll