what with his voyages.

"Still, this is a beautiful cheek," said Pete, speaking low, because she
was moving about beyond the boards.

"These things are purchased," said Shoepack, scraping his feet together
in yellow moosehides. "Listen to me, I have seen them in a long line, on
her shelf, with many odors."

So they were talking together, and Rainbow Pete was putting his fingers
to the flute and staring down the valley, where Throat River was
twisting like a rag.

"I could have had a wife for speaking at Kicking Horse," he said.

"There is one for speaking now," said Shoepack.

"In a few days I go North," Rainbow Pete went muttering. "There is gold
at Dungeon Creek. I have seen samples of this vein."

"She will be the less trouble to you then, if you are not satisfied on
this question," said Shoepack Sam.

Then Rainbow Pete said he was not so certain of her, on questioning
himself. He was a modest man.

"This palm-tree and the other designs you have not been speaking about
will be enticing her," said Shoepack Sam. "But do not speak to her of
going away at the time of asking her."

"This is wisdom," said Rainbow Pete, and he put his lips to the flute,
to be giving us a touch of music.

This was a light reason for marriage, disn't it seem? This was what
Willis Countryman called a marriage of convenience, in the fashion of
frogs. Ay! It was convenient to them to be married. He was a great
reader--Willis.

So they were married, I'm telling you, but it's impossible to know what
he said to her in speaking about it. They were married by the man called
Justice of the Peace on Mushrat. This was before the blasting, and it
was the first marriage on Mushrat.

Then they lived together in the little house she had chosen, sitting on
the black ledge above Scarecrow Charlie's eating-place. Now it was a
wonderment to Mushrat, to hear the sound of Rainbow Pete's old flute
dropping from the dark ledge, by night, when they were taking their
opinion of matrimony up there together, with a candle at the window.

But now look here, when Shoepack Sam came plucking him at the elbow,
saying, "Was I right or was I wrong?" then Rainbow Pete stared at him
with his eyes like drills, and he said to him, "You were curious and
nothing more." Oh my, isn't this the perversity of married men.

They bore him a grudge on Mushrat, for his silence, because, disn't it
seem, this was like a general marriage satisfying all men's souls. It
was t