But we labored with him. Told about what a horrible time he'd
had--he always liked to hear about it--and how there wasn't anybody
else fit to handle his discard in the little game of matrimony--and
what was the use of sending a man that would break at the first
wire fence? If we was going to do the thing, we wanted to do it;
and so forth and so forth, till we had him saddled and bridled and
standing in the corner of the corral as peaceful as a soldier's
monument, for he was the best-hearted old cuss under his crust that
ever lived.

"'All right,' says he. 'I'll do it, and it's "Get there, Eli!"
when I hook dirt. Poor old Aleck is as good as married, and the
Lord have mercy on his soul! But there's one thing I wish to
state: I'm running the job, and I run it my own way. I don't want
any interfering nor no talk afterward--'s that understood?

"It was. He was to cut loose.

"'All right,' says he. 'Poor Aleck!' So that night E. G. W.
Scraggs took his cayuse and made for the railroad station, bound
east.

"Aleck had give us full details. We knew all about his little town
and about that house in particular; just how the morning-glories
grew over the back porch, looking out on the garden patch, and
where the cistern was, which, with his usual good luck, Aleck had
managed to fall into, whilst they were putting a new cover on it.
Yessir; we knew that little East Dakota town as well as if we'd
been raised there; but we were some shy on details concerning the
girl. I swear I don't believe Aleck had ever looked her full in