“‘Well, as a favour to me?’ I says.

“’Well, if you put it in that way—­I don’t want to be small about it.’

“So Arizona goes up to Jones and sticks out his hand.  ’There’s my hand, Jones,’ he says.  ’I’m mighty sorry you told me to shut up my mouth,’ says he.

“‘So am I,’ says Jones heartily, not taking in the sense of the words, but feeling that it was all in good intention.  So that was all right and I stood in with the management in great shape for fixing up the fuss so pleasant.  But it didn’t last.  They say nothing lasts in this world.  There’s some pretty solid rocks in the Coeur d’Alene, however, and I should like to wait around and see if they don’t hold out, but I’ll never make it.  I’ve been in too much excitement.

“Well, the next thing after Jonesy got established was that his niece must come out during vacation and pay him a visit.  ‘Jee-rusalem!’ thinks I, ‘Jonesy’s niece!’ I had visions of a thin, yaller, sour little piece, with mouse-coloured hair plastered down on her head, and an unkind word for everybody.  Jonesy told me about her being in college, and then I stuck a pair of them nose-grabber specks on the picture.  I can stand ’most any kind of a man, but if there’s anything that makes the tears come to my eyes it’s a botch of a woman.  I know they may have good qualities and all that, but I don’t like ’em, and that’s the whole of it.  We gave three loud groans when we got the news in the bull-pen.  And I cussed for ten minutes straight, without repeating myself once, when it so fell out that the members of the board rolled out our way the day the girl had to be sent for, and Jonesy couldn’t break loose, and your Uncle was elected to take the buckboard and drive twenty miles to the railroad.  I didn’t mind the going out, but that twenty miles back with Jonesy’s niece!  Say, I foamed like a soda-water bottle when I got into the bull-pen and told the boys my luck.

“‘Well,’ says Kyle Lambert, ’that’s what you might expect; your sins have found you out.’

“‘No, they ain’t; they’ve caught me at home as usual,’ says I.  ’Well, I’ll give that Eastern blossom an idea of the quality of this country anyhow.’  So I togs myself up in the awfullest rig I could find; strapped two ca’tridge belts to me, every hole filled, and a gun in every holster; put candle-grease on my mustache and twisted the ends up to my eye-winkers; stuck a knife in my hatband and another in my boot; threw a shotgun and a rifle in the buckboard, and pulled out quick through the colt-pens before Jonesy could get his peeps onto me.

“Well, sir, I was jarred witless when I laid my eyes on that young woman.  I’d had my mind made up so thorough as to what she must be that the facts knocked me cold.  She was the sweetest, handsomest, healthiest female I ever see.  It would make you believe in fairy stories again just to look at her.  She was all the things a man ever wanted in this world rolled up in a prize package.