But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before. Even one's
dearest relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration. "I know,
dad," she interrupted; "but this yer man,--this hoss-thief,--did _he_
get clean away without gettin' hurt at all?"

"He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep
away, too. So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about a 'dyin'
stranger' to Rube. He won't swaller it."

"All the same, dad," returned the girl cheerfully, "I reckon to say
it, and say _more_; I'll tell him that ef _he_ manages to get away
too, I'll marry him--there! But ye don't ketch Rube takin' any such
risks in gettin' ketched, or in gettin' away arter!"

Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a
perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking his shotgun from
the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow who
had dropped a calf in the far pasture. Inclined as he was to Reuben's
wooing from his eligibility as to property, he was conscious that he
was sadly deficient in certain qualities inherent in the Clay family.
It certainly would be a kind of _mésalliance_.

Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot,
and then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household
duties, to clear away the things while she went up to her own room to
make her bed. Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that
proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness, and on which
she must lie, in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of
refined features--Reuben Waters--stuck in her window-frame. Salomy