"’No one to love,
None to caress.’

"Well, the lady that answers his signal of distress don’t bear none of the
brands of this yere range. She lives back East, and him and her took up
their claims in each other’s affections through a matrimonial paper known
as _The Heart and Hand_. So they takes their pens in hand and gets through
a hard spell of courtin’ on paper. Love plumb locoes Johnnie. His spellin’
don’t suit him, his handwritin’ don’t suit him, his natchral letters don’t
suit him. So off he sends to Denver for all the letter-writin’ books he
can buy—_Handbook of Correspondence, The Epistolary Guide, The Ready
Letter-Writer_, and a stack more. There’s no denyin’ it, Johnnie certainly
did sweat hisself over them letters."

"Land’s sakes!" said the fat lady.

"Yes, marm; he used to read ’em to me, beginnin’ how he had just seized
five minutes to write to her, when he’d worked the whole day like a mule
over it. She seemed to like the brand, an’ when he sent her the money to
come out here an’ get married, she come as straight as if she had been
mailed with a postage-stamp."

"The brazen thing!" said the fat lady.

"They stopped here, goin’ home to their place. My Lord! warn’t she a
high-flyer! She done her hair like a tied-up horse-tail—my wife called it
a Sikey knot—and it stood out a foot from her head. Some of the boys,
kinder playful, wanted to throw a hat at it and see if it wouldn’t hang,
but they refrained, out of respect to the feelin’s of the groom.