ehind the others. The groom had caught up with the
bride, and from his nervous, irritable gestures I gathered that the poor
soul was trying to explain and to ingratiate himself. But she walked on,
steadily averted, you might say, her head very high, her shoulders drawn
back. The groom, his eyes intent upon her averted face, kept stumbling
with his feet.

"Just look," said Farallone in a friendly voice. "Those whom God hath
joined together. What did the press say of it?"

"I don't remember," I said.

"You lie," said Farallone. "The press called it an ideal match. My God!"
he cried--and so loudly that the bride and the groom must have
heard--"think of being a woman like that and getting hitched to a little
bit of a fuss with a few fine feathers"; and with a kind of sing-song he
began to misquote and extemporize:

"Just for a handful of silver she left me,
Just for a yacht and a mansion of stone,
Just for a little fool nest of fine feathers
She wed Nicodemus and left me alone."

"But she'd never seen me," he went on, and mused for a moment. "Having
seen me--do you guess what she's saying to herself? She's saying: 'Thank
God I'm not too old to begin life over again,' or thinking it. Look at
him! Even you wouldn't have been such a joke. I've a mind to kick the
life out of him. One little kick with bare toes. Life? There's no life
in him--nothing but a jenny-wren."

The groom, who must have heard at least the half of Farallone's speech,
stopped suddenly and waited for us to come up. His face was red and
white--blotchy with rage and vindictiveness. When we were within ten
feet of him he suddenly drew a revolver and fired it point-blank at
Farallone. He had no time for a second shot. Farallone caught his wrist
and shook it till the revolver spun through the air and fell at a
distance. Then Farallone seated himself and, drawing the groom across
his knee, spanked him. Since the beginning of the world children have
been punished by spankings, and the event is memorable, if at all, as a
something rather comical and domestic. But to see a grown man spanked
for the crime of attempted murder is horrible. Farallone's fury got the
better of him, and the blows resounded in the desert. I grappled his
arm, and the recoil of it flung me head over heels. When Farallone had
finished, the groom could not stand. He rolled in the sands, moaning and
hiding his face.

The bride was white as paper; but she had