young Buck Pudden's wife's way, and that's
better than either, when you're dealing with some of these old heifers
who browse over the range all day, stuffing themselves with gossip
about your friends, and then round up at your house to chew the cud
and slobber fake sympathy over you.

Buck wasn't a bad fellow at heart, for he had the virtue of trying to
be good, but occasionally he would walk in slippery places. Wasn't
very sure-footed, so he fell down pretty often, and when he fell from
grace it usually cracked the ice. Still, as he used to say, when he
shot at the bar mirrors during one of his periods of temporary
elevation, he paid for what he broke--cash for the mirrors and sweat
and blood for his cussedness.

Then one day Buck met the only woman in the world--a mighty nice girl
from St. Jo--and she was hesitating over falling in love with him,
till the gossips called to tell her that he was a dear, lovely fellow,
and wasn't it too bad that he had such horrid habits? That settled it,
of course, and she married him inside of thirty days, so that she
could get right down to the business of reforming him.

I don't, as a usual thing, take much stock in this marrying men to
reform them, because a man's always sure of a woman when he's married
to her, while a woman's never really afraid of losing a man till she's
got him. When you want to teach a dog new tricks, it's all right to
show him the biscuit first, but you'll usually get better results by
giving it to him after the performance. But Buck's wife fooled the
whole town and almost put the gossips out of business by keeping Buck
straight for a year. She allowed that what he'd been craving all the
time was a home and family, and that his rare-ups came from not having
'em. Then, like most reformers, she overdid it--went and had twins.
Buck thought he owned the town, of course, and that would have been
all right if he hadn't included the saloons among his real estate. Had
to take his drinks in pairs, too, and naturally, when he went home
that night and had another look at the new arrivals, he thought they
were quadruplets.

Buck straightened right out the next day, went to his wife and told
her all about it, and that was the last time he ever had to hang his
head when he talked to her, for he never took another drink. You see,
she didn't reproach him, or nag him--simply said that she was mighty
proud of the way he'd held on for a year, and that she knew she could
tr