g of whiskey and a glass were within reach of his hand.
Without troubling to remove his boots from the table, he looked up with a
leer at the trembling girl.

Dave spoke at once. "We'll git it over with. The sooner the quicker."

'Lindy's heart was drenched with dread. She shrank from the three pairs
of eyes focused upon her as if they had belonged to wolves. She had hoped
that the preacher might prove a benevolent old man, but this man with the
heavy thatch of unkempt, red hair and furtive eyes set askew offered no
comfort. If there had been a single friend of her family present, if
there had been any woman at all! If she could even be sure of the man she
was about to marry!

It seemed to her that the preacher was sneering when he put the questions
to which she answered quaveringly. Vaguely she felt the presence of some
cruel, sinister jest of which she was the sport.

After the ceremony had been finished the three men drank together while
she sat white-faced before the fire. When at last Ranse Roush and the
red-headed preacher left the cabin, both of them were under the influence
of liquor. Dave had drunk freely himself.

'Lindy would have given her hopes of heaven to be back safely in the
little mud-daubed bedroom she had called her own.

Three days later 'Lindy wakened to find a broad ribbon of sunshine across
the floor of the cabin. Her husband had not come home at all the night
before. She shivered with self-pity and dressed slowly. Already she knew
that her life had gone to wreck, that it would be impossible to live with
Dave Roush and hold her self-respect.

But she had cut herself off from retreat. All of her friends belonged to
the Clanton faction and they would not want to have anything to do with
her. She had no home now but this, no refuge against the neglect and
insults of this man with whom she had elected to go through life. To her
mind came the verdict of old Nance Cunningham on the imprudent marriage
of another girl: "Randy's done made her bed; I reckon she's got to lie
on it."

A voice hailed the cabin from outside. She went to the door. Ranse Roush
and the red-haired preacher had ridden into the clearing and were
dismounting. They had with them a led horse.

"Fix up some breakfast," ordered Ranse.

The young wife flushed. She resented his tone and his manner. Like Dave,
he too assumed that she had come to be a drudge for the whole drunken
clan, a creature to be sneered at and despised.