no! Whut business is it o'
yourn, anyhow? That's about all there was to it. I didn't seem to keer.
But that," she concluded, "was a real _man_. He shore had my other two
men plumb faded."

"What became of your last husband, Mandy?" I asked, willing to be amused
for a time. "Did he die?"

"Nope, didn't die."

"Divorced, eh?"

"Deevorced, hell! No, I tole you, I up an' left him."

"Didn't God join you in holy wedlock, Mandy?"

"No, it was the Jestice of the Peace."

"Ah?"

"Yep. And them ain't holy none--leastways in Missouri. But say, man,
look yere, it ain't God that marries folks, and it ain't Jestices of the
Peace--it's _theirselves_."

I pondered for a moment. "But your vow--your promise?"

"My promise? Whut's the word of a woman to a man? Whut's the word of a
man to a woman? It ain't words, man, it's _feelin's_."

"In sickness or in health?" I quoted.

"That's all right, if your _feelin's_ is all right. The Church is all
right, too. I ain't got no kick. All I'm sayin' to you is, folks marries
_theirselves_."

I pondered yet further. "Mandy," said I, "suppose you were a man, and
your word was given to a girl, and you met another girl and couldn't get
her out of your head, or out of your heart--you loved the new one most
and knew you always would--what would you do?"

But the Sphinx of womanhood may lie under linsey-woolsey as well as
silk. "Man," said she, rising and knocking her pipe against her bony
knee, "you talk like a fool. If my first husband was alive, he might
maybe answer that for you."

CHAPTER XXIII

ISSUE JOINED

Later in the evening, Mandy McGovern having left me, perhaps for the
purpose of assisting her protegee in the somewhat difficult art of
drying buckskin clothing, I was again alone on the river bank, idly
watching the men out on the bars, struggling with their teams and box
boats. Orme had crossed the river some time earlier, and now he joined
me at the edge of our disordered camp.

"How is the patient getting along?" he inquired. I replied, somewhat
surlily, I fear, that I was doing very well, and thenceforth intended to
ride horseback and to comport myself as though nothing had happened.

"I am somewhat sorry to hear that," said he, still smiling in his own
way. "I was in hopes that you would be disposed to turn back down the
river, if Belknap would spare you an escort east."

I looked at him in surprise. "I don't in the least understand why I
should be going