I've got a long head on
me--you amongst 'em--but if any God-forsaken female on this round globe
ever made a bigger fool of herself than I did that whack I'd like to
shake hands with her. I shall see myself setting in that wagon in my new
togs waiting for that train to blow--I'll see that sickening sight till
I draw my last whiff of air. Oh, you don't know! Being a man, you can't
understand what a woman's pride is. Fate has hit me hard licks, but
letting me get my outfit ready, clean up the house, and cook enough
ahead to last a week, and come to town with my own hoss and wagon to
haul a trifling man to the altar who was _jest joking with me_--well,
that's what made me lie."

"God knows, it was enough," Henley answered in his throat. "The banners
toted by the angels have such mottoes as your lie on 'em."

"I was forced to it to protect myself," Dixie said. "You see, Alfred, Ma
is kind o' high strung and liable to fly off the handle and talk before
folks. She thinks I'm all right, and she'd have raised the roof off the
house and let all the country know my plight if I hadn't acted, and
acted quick. I drove home slow that day and studied up a plan. Death was
the only thing that would do any good, and so I killed him. I liked that
part of it, anyway. I wouldn't have lied to you, but I'd done it so
often at home, and with such a straight face, that it had got to be a
settled habit. But I jumped from the frying-pan into the fire in one
way, for they both weep and wail over him--think o' that, and me feeling
like I could pull his ears clean out of his head and stomp 'em into the
ground."

"Oh, they take it that way!" exclaimed Henley.

"That's what they do," said the girl. "I attend that fellow's funeral
sixteen times a day. They want me to put on black--to put on--huh! when
the fool has already made me spend my last dollar on an outfit
that--shucks! Well, you see what I've got my foot into. I had actually
to clap my hand over Ma's mouth the other day while Carrie Wade was
there making her brags to keep Ma from telling of my great loss. Carrie
would see through it, you know she would, and I'd never hear the end of
it. Ma was dead bent on letting folks know, till I worked a trick on
her. I told her, I did, that men didn't like to marry widows, and if I
ever expected to get a husband I must keep Pete's death quiet. With that
understanding they both agreed to hold their tongues. But it's funny,
ain't it?" she ended with a la