them, and built a little home for the girl he loved. Before they could
get to town to be married Grandpa was stricken with rheumatism. Grandma
was already almost past going on with it, so they postponed the
marriage, and as that winter was particularly severe, the young man
took charge of the Edmonson stock and kept them from starving. As soon
as he was able he went for the license.

Mrs. O'Shaughnessy and a neighbor were hunting some cattle that had
wandered away and found the poor fellow shot in the back. He was not
yet dead and told them it was urgently necessary for them to hurry him
to the Edmonsons' and to get some one to perform the marriage ceremony
as quickly as possible, for he could not live long. They told him such
haste meant quicker death because he would bleed more; but he
insisted, so they got a wagon and hurried all they could. But they
could not outrun death. When he knew he could not live to reach home,
he asked them to witness all he said. Everything he possessed he left
to the girl he was to have married, and said he was the father of the
little child that was to come. He begged them to befriend the poor girl
he had to leave in such a condition, and to take the marriage license
as evidence that he had tried to do right. The wagon was stopped so the
jolting would not make death any harder, and there in the shadow of the
great twin buttes he died.

They took the body to the little home he had made, and Mrs.
O'Shaughnessy went to the Edmonsons' to do what she could there. Poor
Cora Jane didn't know how terrible a thing wounded pride is. She told
her parents her misdeeds. They couldn't see that they were in any way
to blame. They seemed to care nothing for her terrible sorrow nor for
her weakened condition. All they could think of was that the child
they had almost worshiped had disgraced them; so they told her to go.