ndy was a
weakling. "You might be a lot worse off. You're married, all right
enough, from all I c'n hear--but she's left town. It ain't as if you had
to live with her."

Ford looked at him a minute and groaned dismally.

"Oh, I ain't meaning anything against the lady herself," Sandy hastened
to assure him. "Far as I know, she's all right--"

"What I want to know," Ford broke in, impatient of condolence when he
needed facts, "is, who _is_ she? And what did I go and marry her for?"

"Well, you'll have to ask somebody that knows. I never seen her, myself,
except when you was leadin' her down to the depot, and you and her
talked it over private like--the way I heard it. I was gitting a
hair-cut and shampoo at the time. First I heard, you was married. I
should think you'd remember it yourself." Sandy looked at Ford
curiously.

"I kinda remember standing up and holding hands with some woman and
somebody saying: 'I now pronounce you man and wife,'" Ford confessed
miserably, his face in his hands again. "I guess I must have done it,
all right."

Sandy was kind enough when not otherwise engaged. He got up and put a
basin of water on the stove to warm, that Ford might bathe his hurts,
and he made him a very creditable drink with lemon and whisky and not
too much water.

"The way I heard it," he explained further, "this lady come to town
looking for Frank Ford Cameron, and seen you, and said you was him.
So--"

"I ain't," Ford interrupted indignantly. "My name's Ford Campbell and
I'll lick any darned son-of-a-gun--"

"Likely she made a mistake," Sandy soothed. "Frank Ford Cameron, she had
you down for, and you went ahead and married her willing enough. Seems
like there was some hurry-up reason that she explained to you private.
She had the license all made out and brought a preacher down from
Garbin. Bill Wright said he overheard you tellin' her you'd do anything
to oblige a lady--"

"That's the worst of it; I'm always too damned polite when I'm drunk!"
grumbled Ford.

Sandy, looking upon his bruised and distorted countenance and recalling,
perhaps, the process by which Ford reached that lamentable condition,
made a sound like a diplomatically disguised laugh. "Not always," he
qualified mildly.

"Anyway," he went on, "you sure married her. That's straight goods. Bill
Wright and Rock was the witnesses. And if you don't know why you done
it--" Sandy waved his hands to indicate his inability to enlighten Ford.
"Righ