w that the statements of both ought
to be preeserved as spec'mens of English ondeefiled.'

"Thar havin' been talk enough, an' Enright an' Peets contendin' that
it's Wolfville's treat, both sides goes weavin' over to the Red Light
an' onbends in quite a frolic.

"It'd shore been better if we had first cut down the corpse, an'
tharby dodged the wrath of Missis Rucker. It's certainly a oversight.
Bar that single incident, thar arises nothin' to mar the good feelin'
which everywhar preevails. Forchoonately, that don't occur none ontil
noon next day; an' by that time the Red Dog folks has all gone home,
leastwise all who can go without fallin' out of the saddle. Which if
them Red Dogs is present, an' able to form opinions, them intemp'rate
exhibitions of Missis Rucker, an' what she says an' threatens ag'inst
us, speshully Enright, would have mortified us to death.

"As showin' the vagaries of the female mind, Missis Rucker seelects
that lynchin' as a topic at chuck time, an' she shore does carry on
scand'lous. We ain't but jest filed into the dinin' room, when she
t'ars loose at Enright like a cyclone in a calico dress. Son, she
certainly does curry our old Lycurgus frightful!

"What does Enright do?

"Whatever can he do more'n mootely arch his back, same as a mule in a
storm of hail, an' stand it?

"When Missis Rucker has done freed her feelin's, an' got them
reecrim'nations dealt down to the turn, she shakes a finger onder
Enright's subdooed nose, an' fulm'nates a warnin'.

"'I tells you once before, Sam Enright,' she says, 'an' I tells you
now ag'in, that you-all drunkards is either goin' to cease pesterin'
me the way you does, or I'm bound I'll make some among you plenty hard
to locate. Now don't you go tellin' me nothin',' she shouts, as
Enright starts to say somethin'; 'don't go harrowin' me up with none
of your fabrications. It's nothin' but your egreegious pompos'ty that
a-way, an' a gen'ral deesire to put on dog an' lord it over us pore
females with meals to cook an' water to draw, which sets you-all to
hangin' parties to the windmill whar they're plumb in the way. An' all
after me takin' my hands out of the dough, too, the time you
Stranglers puts that B'ar Creek Stanton over the jump, an' goin' in
person to the stage corral to p'int out a beam which is a heap better
adapted.'

"'But, ma'am,' expostyoolates Enright, 'you've done followed off the
wrong wagon track entire. It ain't us none; it's them Red Do