thoughts than matrimony—not meanin' any slur on you, for if I'd found you before, I might have been a happy man—Well, here I stand: if you'll marry me, say the word!' By thunder, we gave him a cheer that shook the roof. You can laugh if you like, but it was a noble deed.

"The girl reached out her left hand—so help me Moses! She liked him! I took a careful squint at old Scraggsy, in this new light, and I want to tell you that there was something kind of fine in that long lean face of his, and when he took the girl's hand he looked like a gentleman.

"You wouldn't think that holding a gun to her head, and threatenin' to blow her brains out was just the touch that would set a maiden's heart tremblin' for a man, but if a woman takes a fancy to you, your habits and customs, manners and morals, disposition, personal appearance, financial standing and way of doing things generally is only a little matter of detail.

"'How will this figger out legally?' E. G. W. asked the minister.

"The minister, he was a cheerful, practical sort of lad, ready to indorse anything that would smooth the rugged road of life.

"'Do you renounce the Mormon religion?' he asks.

"'Bet your life,' says Scraggs. 'And all its works.'

"'That settles it,' says the minister. 'Besides, I don't think anybody will ever come poking out here to make trouble—whenever you say the word.'

"'One minute,' says Scraggs, and he turned to the girl very gentle. 'Are you doing this of your own free will, and not because I lugged you out here?'

"'Yessir,' says she.

"'You want me, just as I stand?'

"'Yessir.'

"'Keno. I won't forget it.' Then he put his hand on her head, took off his hat, and raised his face. 'O God!' he prays, 'you know what a miserable time I've had in this line before. I admit it was nine-tenths my fault, but now I call for an honest deck and the hands played above the table. And make me act decent for the sake of this nice little girl. Amen.' Then he pulled a twenty-dollar gold piece out of his pocket and plunked her down before the minister, 'Shoot,' says he. 'You're faded.'

"Well. there old Scraggs—I say 'old,' but the man weren't more than forty—celebrated his eighty-first marriage in that old bull-pen, and they lived as happy ever after as any story book. Which knocks general principles. Probably it was because that no man was ever treated whiter than she treated him, and no woman was ever treated whiter than he treated her; he had the knack of bein' awful good and loving to her, without being foolish. Experience will tell, and he'd experienced a heap of the other side.

"And now, what do you think of Aleck? The scare we threw into him that night wound up his moanin' and grievin' about the other girl. He never cheeped once after that, but got fat and hearty, and when I left the ranch he was makin' up to a widow with four children, as bold as brass. There was more poetry in E. G. W, than there was in Aleck, after all."

II

IN THE TOILS

Mr. Ezekiel George Washington Scraggs, late of Missouri, later of Utah, and latest of North Dakota, stood an even six-foot unshod. He had an air of leanness, almost emaciation, not borne out by any fact of anatomy. We make our hasty estimates from the face. Brother Scraggs's face was gaunt. Misfortune had written there, in a large, angular hand, "It might have been"—those saddest words of tongue or pen. The pensive sorrow of E. G. W.'s countenance had misled many people—not but what the sorrow was genuine enough (Scraggsy explained it in four words, "I've been a Mormon"), but the expression of a blighted, helpless youth carried into early middle age was an appearance only: I mean it was nothing to bank on in dealing with Zeke. Still, if you could see those eyes, dimmed with a settled melancholy; those mustachios, which, absorbing all the capillary possibilities of his head, drooped like weeping willows from his upper lip; and above, the monumental nose—that springing prow that once so grandly parted the waves of adverse circumstance, until, blown by the winds of ambition, his bark was cast ruined on the shores of matrimony—you would not so much blame the man who mistook E. G. Washington Scraggs for a something not too difficult. Red Saunders said that Scraggsy looked like a forlorn hope lost in a fog, but when you came to cash in on that basis it was most astonishing. In general a man of few words, on occasions he would tip back his chair, insert the stem of his corncob pipe in an opening provided by nature at the cost of a tooth, and tell us about it.

[Illustration: "Scraggsy looked like a forlorn hope lost in a fog."]

"Why can't people be honest?" said Mr. Scraggs—Silence!

"Charley!" cried Red, reproachfully, "why don't you tell the gentleman?"

"No, no, no!" replied Charley. "You be older'n me, Red—you explain."

"Well," said Red, "I suppose the loss of their hair kind of discourages 'em."

"I had rather," meditated Mr. Scraggs, "I had much rather wear the top of my head a smooth white record of a well-spent life than go amblin' around the country like the Chicago fire out for a walk, and I repeat: Why can't people be honest?"

"I begin to pity somebody an awful lot," said Red. "Did you send him home barefoot?"

"You go on!" retorted Mr. Scraggs. "I fell into the hands of the Filly-steins oncet, and they put the trail of the serpent all over me. I run into the temple of them twin false gods, Mammon and Gammon, and I stood to draw one suit of sack-cloth and a four-mule wagon-load of ashes."

"Is them the close you got on now?" said Charley. "And what did you get for the ashes?"

"The play come up like this," said Scraggs. "After my eighteenth bestowin' of the honored name of Scraggs upon a person that didn't appreciate it the Mormon Church see fit to assume a few duties on me. I was put in a position of importance in a placer minin' districk inhabited by jack-rabbits, coyotes, Chinamen, and Mrs. Scraggses. And still I wasn't happy. Them jack-rabbits et up my little garding patch; the coyotes gathered at nights and sung me selections from the ghost dance; the Chinamen sprung every con-cussed trick on me that a man who wears his whiskers down his back can think of; and day and night alike, Mrs. Scraggs, from one to eighteen, informed me what I'd ort to do.

"I tried to strike up a little friendly conversation with the Chinks, for variety, but it weren't no use. A Chinaman'll be a Mormon, or a Democrat, or a cannibal, or any other durn thing for five cents, sixty days from date. He ain't got any more natural convictions than a Missouri River catfish. They'd just keep a-watchin' my face so's they could agree with me. Now, I didn't want that. I wanted to get up an argument with somebody I could sass back, because in my own house, where I was lord and master, if I happened to remark it was a nice, bright day everybody swore you couldn't see your hand before your face, and I let the subject drop right there. Mrs. Scraggs quar'led some among herself, but when I come in her motto was, 'United we stand him on his head, and divided we fall upon his neck.' When she done the last, of a still day, you could hear the crack of my cervycal vertybree three mile.

"So, at last, I wearied. I writ a letter to the Elders tellin' 'em I enjoyed the work, but thought it was time for my spirit of self-sacrifice to exercise himself a little. So would they mind givin' me another job? Somethin' like lyin' on a board and havin' a doctor rip-saw chunks out of me for the benefit of