diate a-plenty."

"But what you goin' to do? She won't bat a eye at him, and he ain't
goin' to send for her."

"Oh, yes he _is_," corrected Tom Osby; and the forefinger, crowding
tobacco into his pipe, worked vigorously. "He's _got_ to send for
her."

"Looks to me like we can't do nothin'," replied his friend,
pessimistically. "I like that girl, too. Say, I'll braid her a nice
hair rope and take it down to her. Maybe that'll kind o' square things
with her for losin' out with Dan."

"Yes," scoffed Tom Osby, "that's all the brains a fool cow puncher has
got. Do you reckon a hair lariat, or a new pair of spurs, is any
decent remedy for a girl's wownded affections? No, sir, not none. No,
you go on down and take your old hair rope with you, and give it to the
girl. That's all right; but you're goin' to take something else along
with you at the same time."

"What's that?" "Why, you're goin' to take a letter to her,--a letter
from Dan Andersen's death-bed."

"Who--me? Death-bed? Why, he ain't _on_ no death-bed. He's eatin'
three squares a day and settin' up readin' novels. Death-bed nothin'!"

"Oh, no," said Tom Osby, "that's where you're mistaken. Dan Anderson
_is_ on his death-bed; and he writes his dyin' confession, his message
in such cases made and pervided. He sends his last words to his own
true love. Says he, 'All is forgiven.' Then she flies to receive his
dyin' words. You ain't got no brains, Curly. You ain't got no
imagi_na_tion. Why, if I left all this to you, she'd get here too
late for the funeral. You're a specialist, Curly. You can rope and
throw a two-thousand-pound steer, but you can't handle a woman that
don't weigh over a hundred and twenty-five. Now, you watch your Pa."

Curly sat and looked at him in silence for a few minutes, but at last a
light seemed to dawn upon him. "Oh, I _see_," said he, smiling
broadly. "You mean for us to get up a letter for him--write it out and
send it, like he done it hisself."

Tom Osby nodded. "Of course--that's the only way. There wouldn't
either of them write to the other one. That's the trouble with these
here States girls, and them men from the States, too. You have to take
care of 'em. You and me has got to be gardeens for these two folks.
If we don't, they're goin' to make all kinds of trouble for theirselves
and each other."

"Kin you disguise your handwritin' any, Tom?" asked Curly. "I can't.
Mine's kind of sot."

"Curly,