forget the cooking of his mother. Great was the havoc wrought by Mountain
Pink’s pies and complexion, but she followed the decorous precedent of
Cæsar’s wife, and, like her pastry, remained above suspicion.

Her husband, whose name was Jim Bosky, seemed, to the self-impanelled jury
that spent its time sitting on the case, singularly insensible to his own
advantages. Not only did he fail to take a proper pride in her beauty, but
there were dark hints abroad that he had never tasted one of her pies.
When delicately questioned on this point, at that stage of liquid
refreshment that makes these little personalities not impossible, Bosky
had grimly quoted the dearth of shoes among shoe-makers’ children.

Whatever were the facts of the case, Mountain Pink got the sympathy that
might have been expected in a section of the country where the ratio of
the sexes is fifty to one. Chugg, eating her pies regularly once a week on
his stage-route, said nothing, but he presented her with a red plush
photograph album with oxidized silver clasps, and by this first reckless
expenditure of money in the life of Chugg, Natrona, Johnson, Converse, and
Sweetwater counties knew that Cupid had at last found a vulnerable spot in
the tough and weather-tanned hide of the old stage-driver.

Nor did Cupid stop here with his pranks. Having inoculated the
stage-driver with the virus of romance, madness began to work in the veins
of Chugg. He presented Mountain Pink with the gray woollen stocking—not
extracting a single coin—and urged her to get a divorce from the clodlike
man who had never appreciated her and marry him.

Mountain Pink coyly took the stocking so generously given for the divorce
and subsequent trousseau, and Chugg continued to drive his stage with an
Apollo-like abandon, whistling love-songs the while.