noiselessly across the plain, under the touch of the wind, which fashioned innumerable oddly shaped hummocks, and then gently purred them away again, to heap on others.

After they had driven silently for some time, the woman spoke: "There's a man standing in that clump of cat's-claw ahead. Did yuh see him?"

Cassidy thoughtfully eased up the perspiring team. "I know him," he answered, although apparently he had not raised his eyes above the dash-board for a long time. "Name is Tommy."

"Well, what's Tommy hidin' in those bushes for?" demanded the woman.

"A feller broke into Number One Commissary last night."

"Did Tommy do it?"

"No, ma'am—not this time. His partner done it and skipped out."

"Does Jake think Tommy did it?"

"Yes, ma'am. I see Jake hitchin' up tuh go after him when we started out."

There was little said after that until they came abreast of the cat's-claw near the road. Cassidy pulled up.

"Say, Tommy! Oh, yuh Tommy!" he called persuasively at the silent bushes. "Come, git in here. This lady wants yuh."

"I guess Jake's a-comin'," replied Tommy, poking his head into view from his thorny retreat.

"I guess he is," said Cassidy, and looked over his shoulder at a rapidly approaching pillar of dust. "It's a good thing the county pays for his horse-flesh." There was a pause. "I reckon you'd better hurry some, Tommy," drawled Cassidy.

"Don't stand there imperiling your life, tryin' tuh guess who I am," said the widow abruptly. "Get right in here and cover up with alfalfa and them horse-blankets, and lie quiet. I want yuh."

"What for?" queried Tommy, as he clambered in, being a young man of devious thought.

"For a witness!" said Sarah Gentry unfathomably—for Tommy.

Cassidy looked puzzled for a moment. Then a slow wave of red crept over his face and crimsoned his ears. He started his horses again to cover his confusion.

The woman let him think for a moment; then her eyes drew his own startled orbs around and enveloped them in a soft light.

"Yuh know what I mean, Mister Cassidy?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well—shall we?" shyly.

"Yes, ma'am," answered Cassidy, and blushed incontinently.

Behind them a light buggy was being driven over the desert at a furious pace. As it came nearer, the two in the ranch-wagon, with its confused huddle of horse-blankets and hay, beneath which lay the trustful Tommy, could hear the shock of the springs as it bumped from one chuck-hole to another; but they did not turn their heads.

"Hello, there, Cass!" shouted the sheriff genially, as he pulled down alongside of them. "How'do, Mis' Gentry! Pretty hot travelin', ain't it?"

"I s'pose it is—being July," the little woman replied, with the first trace of confusion that Cassidy had seen. "I—I hadn't been noticing lately."

"I'm in a terrible hurry," the sheriff continued rapidly. "Some are sayin' young Tommy Ivison come this way, and I want him. I hate tuh give yuh my dust. Whoa, Dick! Whoa, Pet!" He pulled in his fretting team with a heavy hand. "I've got tuh get him before he crosses the California line, so I got tuh fan right along. Gid-ap, there!"

"Wait a minute, Jake."

"Can't do it, Mis' Gentry. If he's more than a couple of miles ahead, I can't ketch him. What is it I can do for you?"

"Yuh kin marry us two!" said the little woman, with a gulp.

"Marry yuh?" roared the sheriff. "Can't do it, ma'am—not even for a friend. Awful sorry, Mis' Gentry, but I've just got tuh go." He jerked the whip from its socket for a merciless slash.

"Jake!" said the little woman commandingly.

"Ma'am?" said the sheriff in an uncertain tone.

"Yuh heard what I said?"

"Yes, ma'am; but it ain't regular at all. I ain't no justice of the peace; I ain't got power enough; I ain't got anything—Bible, nor statutes, nor nothing. I couldn't take no fee, either; it wouldn't be right. By Golly!" he exclaimed excitedly, "I bet that's him, up ahead, right now!" and he struck his horses.

"Whip up!" said the woman to Cassidy, and she stood up in the wagon and held on by the rocking top.

"Jake Bowerman!" she called across the erratic width that separated the rapidly moving vehicles, "if you've got power enough tuh 'rest people and keep 'em in jail for the rest of their lives, marryin' ain't much worse, and yuh kin do it if yuh try!"

"Yuh ain't got any witness, Mis' Gentry!" bellowed the confused Jake, as a last resort, and touched his horses again. Cassidy let out another notch, and kept even. The wagons were swaying jerkily from side to side.

"Yes, I have!" snapped the woman. "Now, yuh hurry up!"

"Better stand up, Mister Cassidy," she whispered; "we've got tuh be real quick!"

"It don't seem hardly regular!" yelled the discomfited sheriff, skilfully avoiding a dangerous hummock and crashing through a mesquit-bush which whipped away his hat. "I'll—I'll do it for yuh, Mis' Gentry. I'll marry yuh as tight as I kin; but I can't stop drivin' for that, and I've forgot a whole lot how it goes. Are yuh all ready?"

The desert had changed from its soft, yielding sand to a brown, flat floor of small stones and volcanic dust, fairly hard and unrutted. Pulling in dangerously close, the sheriff shifted his reins to one hand and faced them. The two wagons were racing neck and neck in a cloud of dust, Cassidy handling his lines with skill and growing satisfaction. From the body of the wagon under him, and quite distinguishable from the clatter of the horses' feet, came a series of sharp bumps as the unfortunate Tommy ricochetted from side to side.

"Do yuh believe in the Constitution of the United States?" bellowed Jake.

"We do!" pealed the woman.

"Do yuh—whoa, there, Pet! Goll darn your hide!—do yuh solemnly swear never tuh fight no duels?"

"What's that?" screamed the woman.

"He said a 'duel'!" shouted Cassidy in her ear, above the uproar of the wheels. "Tell him no! We won't fight many duels!"

"No! No duels!" sang the woman.

"And no aidin' or abettin'?"

"No! No bettin' at all!"

"Nor have any connection with any duels whatsoever?"

The widow looked puzzled. She didn't understand. What had duels to do with solemn marriage?

"It's all in the statutes, all right!" roared the sheriff angrily, as vast portions of the laws of Nevada fled from his agitated mind.

"Mebbe you're both grand jurors now; I dunno. I think that's the oath. I reckon it's good and bindin', anyhow." He stood up in his buggy and shook the reins furiously over his horses' backs to escape from further legal entanglements. Leaning back over the folded top, he pointed at them magisterially with his whip.

"And now, by the grace of God and me, Jake Bowerman, I hereby pronounce yuh man and wife!"

With a roar of wheels, bad language, and a cloud of dust, the sheriff vanished in pursuit of the California line and the fleet-footed Tommy.

Cassidy pulled his horses into a much-needed walk. The little woman sat down and felt for her bonnet.

"My!" gasped Mrs. Cassidy, "that was going some! Do yuh reckon we're really married?"

The team, unheeded, had swung off from the desert into a road made in damper, richer soil. Not far ahead, now, the dark foliage of the Willow Spring ranch rose in cool relief against the grim, sun-reddened buttes beyond. Their passenger had some time since dropped quietly off and was walking ahead of the plodding horses.

As Cassidy looked forward at the quiet fields, and the ranch, and the spring, in the half-circle of willows where the cattle drank, now gradually dimming in the soft twilight, and then, with an involuntary turn, at the God-forgotten waste behind him, something melted in his breast; something cleared up his mind, and wiped it free of his thoughtless appetites and sins, and made him