bowed to 'is wife. Funny kinda eyes, she's got--ever take notice? Yeller,
by granny! first time I ever seen yeller eyes in a human's face. Mebbe it
was the sun in 'em, but they sure was yeller. I dunno as they hurt her
looks none, either. Kinda queer lookin', but when you git used to 'em you
kinda like 'em.

"'N' I says: 'Tain't half wide enough, nor a third'--spoke right up to 'im!
I was thinkin' of the hull blamed country, and I didn't care how he took
it. 'Any good, able-bodied wind'll jump a fire across that guard so quick
it won't reelize there was any there,' I says.

"Man didn't like it none too well, either. He says to me: 'That guard'll
stop any fire I ever saw,' and I got right back at him--_he-he!_ 'Man,' I
says, 'you ain't never saw a prairie fire'--just like that. 'You wait,' I
says, 'till the real thing comes along. We ain't had any fires since you
come into the country,' I says, 'and you don't know what they're like. Now,
you take my advice and plow another four or five furrows--and plow 'em out,
seventy-five or a hundred feet from here,' I says, 'an' make sure you
git all the grass burned off between--and do it on a still day,' I says.
'You'll burn up the hull country if you keep on this here way you're
doing,' I told him--straight out, just like that. 'And when you do it,' I
says, 'you better let somebody know, so's they can come an' help,' I says.
''Tain't any job a man oughta tackle alone,' I says to him. 'Git help, Man,
git help.'

"Well, by granny--_he-he!_ Man's wife brustled up at me like a--a--" He
searched his brain for a simile, and failed to find one. "'I have been
helping Manley, Mr. Polycarp Jenks,' she says to me, 'and I flatter myself
I have done as well as any _man_ could do.' And, by granny! the way them
yeller eyes of hern blazed at me--_he-he!_ I had to laugh, jest to look