ervative, old-fashioned, and respectable a form was
quite unlooked-for by Rough and Ready, and was thought by some a trifle
pretentious. There were not half-a-dozen families in Rough and Ready;
nobody ever knew before that Spindler had any relations, and this
"ringing in" of strangers to the settlement seemed to indicate at least
a lack of public spirit. "He might," urged one of his critics, "hev
given the boys,--that had worked alongside o' him in the ditches by day,
and slung lies with him around the camp-fire by night,--he might hev
given them a square 'blow out,' and kep' the leavin's for his old
Spindler crew, just as other families do. Why, when old man Scudder had
his house-raisin' last year, his family lived for a week on what was
left over, arter the boys had waltzed through the house that night,--and
the Scudders warn't strangers, either." It was also evident that there
was an uneasy feeling that Spindler's action indicated an unhallowed
leaning towards the minority of respectability and exclusiveness, and
a desertion--without the excuse of matrimony--of the convivial and
independent bachelor majority of Rough and Ready.

"Ef he was stuck after some gal and was kinder looking ahead, I'd hev
understood it," argued another critic.

"Don't ye be too sure he ain't," said Uncle Jim Starbuck gloomily.
"Ye'll find that some blamed woman is at the bottom of this yer 'family'
gathering. That and trouble ez almost all they're made for!"

There happened to be some truth in this dark prophecy, but none of the
kind that the misogynist supposed. In fact, Spindler had called a
few evenings before at the house of the Rev. Mr. Saltover, and Mrs.
Saltover, having one of her "Saleratus headaches," had turned him over
to her widow sister, Mrs. Huldy Price, who obediently bestowed upon
him that practical and critical attention which she divided with the
stocking she was darning. She was a woman of thirty-five, of singular
nerve and practical wisdom, who had once smuggled her wounded husband
home from a border affray, calmly made coffee for his deceived pursuers
while he lay hidden in the loft, walked four miles for that medical
assistance which arrived too late to save him, buried him secretly in
his own "quarter section," with only one other witness and mourner, and
so saved her position and property in that wild community, who believed
he had fled. There was very little of this experience to be traced in
her round, fresh-color