r fresh brunette skin,--tied the strings,
letting the blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind,
jumped on her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles in shapely
white stockings, whistled to the hound, and waving her hand with a "So
long, sonny!" to the lately bereft but admiring nephew, flapped and
fluttered away in her short brown holland gown.

Her father's house was four miles distant. Contrasted with the
cabin she had just quitted, it was a superior dwelling, with a long
"lean-to" at the rear, which brought the eaves almost to the ground
and made it look like a low triangle. It had a long barn and cattle
sheds, for Madison Clay was a "great" stockraiser and the owner of
a "quarter section." It had a sitting-room and a parlor organ, whose
transportation thither had been a marvel of "packing." These things
were supposed to give Salomy Jane an undue importance, but the
girl's reserve and inaccessibility to local advances were rather the
result of a cool, lazy temperament and the preoccupation of a large,
protecting admiration for her father, for some years a widower. For
Mr. Madison Clay's life had been threatened in one or two feuds,--it
was said, not without cause,--and it is possible that the pathetic
spectacle of her father doing his visiting with a shotgun may
have touched her closely and somewhat prejudiced her against the
neighboring masculinity. The thought that cattle, horses, and "quarter
section" would one day be hers did not disturb her calm. As for Mr.
Clay, he accepted her as housewifely, though somewhat "interfering,"
and, being one of "his own womankind," therefore not without some
degree of merit.

"Wot's this yer I'm hearin' of your doin's over at Red Pete's?
Honey-foglin' with a horse-thief, eh?" said Mr. Clay two days later at
breakfast.

"I reckon you heard about the straight thing, then," said Salomy Jane
unconcernedly, without looking round.

"What do you kalkilate Rube will say to it? What are you goin' to tell
_him_?" said Mr. Clay sarcastically.

"Rube," or Reuben Waters, was a swain supposed to be favored
particularly by Mr. Clay. Salomy Jane looked up.

"I'll tell him that when _he's_ on his way to be hung, I'll kiss
him,--not till then," said the young lady brightly.

This delightful witticism suited the paternal humor, and Mr. Clay
smiled; but, nevertheless, he frowned a moment afterwards.

"But this yer hoss-thief got away arter all, and that's a hoss of a