down to your
Aunt Viney's cabin 'for an example' before I plugged him? No!" in deep
disgust. "No! Why, I just meandered through the wood, careless-like,
till he comes out, and I just rode up to him, and I said"--

But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before. Even one's dearest
relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration. "I know, dad," she
interrupted; "but this yer man,--this hoss-thief,--did HE get clean away
without gettin' hurt at all?"

"He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep away,
too. So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about a 'dyin' stranger'
to Rube. He won't swaller it."

"All the same, dad," returned the girl cheerfully, "I reckon to say it,
and say MORE; I'll tell him that ef HE manages to get away too, I'll
marry him--there! But ye don't ketch Rube takin' any such risks in
gettin' ketched, or in gettin' away arter!"

Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a
perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking his shotgun from
the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow who had
dropped a calf in the far pasture. Inclined as he was to Reuben's wooing
from his eligibility as to property, he was conscious that he was sadly
deficient in certain qualities inherent in the Clay family. It certainly
would be a kind of mesalliance.

Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot, and
then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household duties, to
clear away the things while she went up to her own room to make her bed.
Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that proverbial bed
she might be making in her willfulness, and on which she must lie,
in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of refined
features--Reuben Waters--stuck in her window-frame. Salomy Jane smiled
over her last witticism regarding him and enjoyed, it, like your true
humorist, and then, catching sight of her own handsome face in the
little mirror, smiled again. But wasn't it funny about that horse-thief
getting off after all? Good Lordy! Fancy Reuben hearing he was alive and
going round with that kiss of hers set on his lips! She laughed again, a
little more abstractedly. And he had returned it like a man, holding her
tight and almost breathless, and he going to be hung the next minute!
Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times, by force, chance, or
stratagem. In a certain ingenuous forfeit game of the locali