cussed for ten minutes straight, without repeating myself once,
when it so fell out that the members of the board rolled out our
way the day the girl had to be sent for, and Jonesy couldn't break
loose, and your Uncle was elected to take the buckboard and drive
twenty miles to the railroad. I didn't mind the going out, but
that twenty miles back with Jonesy's niece! Say, I foamed like a
soda-water bottle when I got into the bull-pen and told the boys my
luck.

"'Well,' says Kyle Lambert, 'that's what you might expect; your
sins have found you out.'

"'No, they ain't; they've caught me at home as usual,' says I.
'Well, I'll give that Eastern blossom an idea of the quality of
this country anyhow.' So I togs myself up in the awfullest rig I
could find; strapped two ca'tridge belts to me, every hole filled,
and a gun in every holster; put candle-grease on my mustache and
twisted the ends up to my eye-winkers; stuck a knife in my hatband
and another in my boot; threw a shotgun and a rifle in the
buckboard, and pulled out quick through the colt-pens before Jonesy
could get his peeps onto me.

"Well, sir, I was jarred witless when I laid my eyes on that young
woman. I'd had my mind made up so thorough as to what she must be
that the facts knocked me cold. She was the sweetest, handsomest,
healthiest female I ever see. It would make you believe in fairy
stories again just to look at her. She was all the things a man
ever wanted in this world rolled up in a prize package. Tall,
round and soople, limber and springy in her action as a
thoroughbred, and with something modest yet kind of daring in her