d a nice trip, good outfit and strong cattle. Uncle Jess
mounted us ten horses to the man, every one fourteen hands or better,
for we were contracted for delivery in Nebraska. It was a five months'
drive with scarcely an incident on the way. Just a run or two and a dry
drive or so. I had lots of time to think about Kate. When we reached
the Chisholm crossing on Red River, I felt certain that I would find
a letter, but I didn't. I wrote her from there, but when we reached
Caldwell, nary a letter either. The same luck at Abilene. Try as I
might, I couldn't make it out. Something was wrong, but what it was, was
anybody's guess.

"At this last place we got our orders to deliver the cattle at the
junction of the middle and lower Loup. It was a terror of a long drive,
but that wasn't a circumstance compared to not hearing from Kate. I kept
all this to myself, mind you. When our herd reached its destination,
which it did on time, as hard luck would have it there was a hitch in
the payment. The herd was turned loose and all the outfit but myself
sent home. I stayed there two months longer at a little place called
Broken Bow. I held the bill of sale for the herd, and would turn it
over, transferring the cattle from one owner to another, on the word
from my employer. At last I received a letter from Uncle Jesse saying
that the payment in full had been made, so I surrendered the final
document and came home. Those trains seemed to run awful slow. But I got
home all too soon, for she had then been married three months.

"You see an agent for eight-day clocks came along, and being a stranger
took her eye. He was one of those nice, dapper fellows, wore a red
necktie, and could talk all day to a woman. He worked by the rule of
three,--tickle, talk, and flatter, with a few cutes thrown in for a
pelon; that gets nearly any of them. They live in town now. He's a
windmill agent. I never went near them."

Meanwhile the fire kept pace with the talk, thanks to Uncle Lance's
watchful eye. "That's right, Tiburcio, carry up plenty of good lena,"
he kept saying. "Bring in all the black-jack oak that you can find; it
makes fine coals. These are both big gobblers, and to bake them until
they fall to pieces like a watermelon will require a steady fire till
morning. Pile up a lot of wood, and if I wake up during the night, trust
to me to look after the fire. I've baked so many turkeys this way that
I'm an expert at the business."

"A girl's argu