“‘None whatever!’ says Jack Moore; an’ Dan an’ Cherokee an’ Texas echoes the remark.

“‘You-all camp down yere with a tumbler of Valley Tan,’ says Enright, ‘an’ make yourse’f comfortable with my colleagues, while I goes an’ consults with our Gretna Green outfit in the r’ar room.’

“Enright returns after a bit, an’ his face has that air of se’f-satisfaction that goes with a gent who’s playin’ on velvet.

“‘Your comin’ son-in-law,’ says Enright to old Glegg, ’defends himse’f from them charges as follows:  He agrees to quit gamblin’; he says he lies a whole lot when he tells you-all he don’t drink none; an’ lastly, deplorin’ “Toad” as a cognomen, an’ explainin’ that he don’t assoome it of free choice but sort o’ has it sawed off on him in he’pless infancy, he offers—­you consentin’ to the weddin’—­to reorganise onder the name of “Benjamin Glegg Allen."’

“Son, this yere last proposal wins over old Glegg in a body.  He not only withdraws all objections to the nuptials, but allows he’ll make the pinfeather sport an’ Abby full partners in the Sunflower.  At this p’int, Enright notifies the preacher sharp that all depends on him; an’ that excellent teacher at once acquits himse’f so that in two minutes Wolfville adds another successful weddin’ to her list of triumphs.

“’It ‘lustrates too,’ says Enright, when two days later the weddin’ party has returned to Tucson, an’ Wolfville ag’in sinks to a normal state of slumbrous ease, ‘it sort o’ ’lustrates how open to argyments a gent is when once he’s lost his weepons.  Now if he isn’t disarmed that time, my eloquence wouldn’t have had no more effect on old Glegg than throwin’ water on a drowned rat.’”

CHAPTER XVII.

The Clients of Aaron Green.

“And so there were no lawyers in Wolfville?” I said.  The Old Cattleman filled his everlasting pipe, lighted it, and puffed experimentally.  There was a handful of wordless moments devoted to pipe.  Then, as one satisfied of a smoky success, he turned attention to me and my remark.

“Lawyers in Wolfville?” he repeated.  “Not in my day; none whatever!  It’s mighty likely though that some of ’em’s done come knockin’ along by now.  Them jurists is a heap persistent, not to say diffoosive, an’ soon or late they shore trails into every camp.  Which we’d have had ‘em among us long ago, but nacherally, an’ as far as argyments goes, we turns ’em off.  Se’f-preservation is a law of nacher, an’ these maxims applies to commoonities as much as ever they does to gents personal.  Wherefore, whenever we notices a law wolf scoutin’ about an’ tryin’ to get the wind on us, we employs our talents for lyin’, fills him up with fallacies, an’ teaches him that to come to Wolfville is to put down his destinies on a dead kyard; an’ he tharupon abandons whatever of plans he’s harbourin’ ag’in us, seein’ nothin’ tharin.

“It’s jest before I leaves for the East when one of these coyotes crosses up with Old Man Enright in Tucson, an’ submits the idee of his professional invasion of our camp.