popular.

After the celebration we settled for the winter, and I put all the
ponies except Jones and the sleigh team down in the canyon pasture. That
made the ranch sort of lonesome, but we're short of hay on account of
the wedding-trip. We're broke.

CHAPTER V

THE ILLUSTRIOUS SALVATOR

_Jesse's Letter_

Mother, I'm married. I thought I'd got bliss by the horns, but seems
I've not roped what I throwed for, and what I've caught is trouble. I
wish you weren't in Heaven, which feels kind of cold and distant when a
fellow's lonesome. Nobody loves me, and the mosquitoes has mistook me
for a greenhorn.

I can't smoke in the lady's home, and when it's forty below zero
outside, a pipe clogs with ice from your breath. Chewing is worse,
because she cried. She don't need my guns, saddles, and me, or any sort
of litter whar she beds down, and my table manners belongs under the
table. Men, she says, feeds sitting down, so they won't be mistook for
animals, which stand up.

Loyal Englishmen like the late Trevor now frying, has a cold bath every
morning, specially in winter, which throws a surprising light upon his
last symptoms. It's that frozen manner and pyjamas, which makes the
Englishman so durned popular. If I belonged to the episcopal sect,
wearing a coat in the house instead of out-of-doors, and used pink
tooth-paste instead of yellow soap, maybe I'd like my hash with curry
powder, and have some hope of going, when I die, to parts of Heaven
where the English keeps open windows, instead of open house. Meanwhile I
jest moved back into the old cabin with Mick,--he's wagging himself by
the tail between my legs to say as this writing habit is a vice. If I'd
only a bottle of whisky now I'd be good, but as it's eighty miles to
refreshments, he's got to put up with vice.

This here storm has been running the province since Monday, and making
itself at home as if it had come to stay. Put your nose to the door and
it's froze, so it's no fun crossing to the stable. I just got back.
Horses like to lick white men because we taste salt from eating so much
in our bacon, but that mare Jones takes liberties in kicking me through
the door when she knows durned well it's shut.

Mrs. Trevor's husband was an opera singer which mislaid his vocal cords,
so settled here to be on his romantic lonesome, and spite his wife. He
went loco, and mistook her for a bear; she broke her ankle stampeding;
and I took an interest, he shooting