t when she boils out of
a winter's mornin' to light the fire, an' rustle me my matoot'nal
buckwheat cakes an' sa'sage.'"

III

CYNTHIANA, PET-NAMED ORIGINAL SIN

"This yere speecific heroine is a heap onconventional, so much so as
to be plumb puzzlin' to the common mind. Jest the same, she finishes
winner, an' makes herse'f a gen'ral source of pride. She don't notify
us, none whatever, that she intends a Wolfville deboo; jest nacherally
descends upon us, that a-way, as onannounced as a mink on a settin'
hen. All the same, we knows she's comin' while yet she's five mile out
on the trail. Not that we savvys who she is or what she aims at; we
merely gets moved up next to the fact that she's a lady, an' likewise
no slouch for looks.

"We reads these yere trooths in the dust old Monte kicks up, as he
comes swingin' in with the stage. Which it's the weakness of this
inebriate, as I tells you former, that once let him get a lady aboard,
it looks like it's a signal for him to go pourin' the leather into his
team like he ain't got a minute to live. It's a p'lite attention he
assoomes, in his besotted way, is doo the sex.

"It's the more strange, too, since it's the only attention Monte ever
pays 'em. He never looks at 'em, never speaks to 'em; simply plants
himse'f on the box, as up an' down as a cow's tail, an' t'ars into
them harassed hosses. If the lady he's complimentin' that a-way was to
get jolted overboard--which the same wouldn't be no mir'cal,
considerin' how that dipsomaniac drives--it's even money he leaves her
hunched up like a jack-rabbit alongside the trail, an' never thinks of
stoppin' or turnin' back. He's merely a drunkard with that one fool
idee of showin' off, an' nothin' the stage people's ever able to say
can teach him different. From first to last you-all could measure
Monte's notion of the pulcritoode of a petticoat passenger by the
extent to which he lams loose with his whip. Given what he deems is a
she-sunburst, he shorely does maltreat the company's live stock
shameful.

"'If,' observes Peets, as a bunch of us stands gossipin' round in
front of the Red Light that time, watchin' the dust cloud draw nearer
an' nearer--'if it's poss'ble to imagine the old sot as havin' a
Cleopatra to freight over from Tucson, it's a cow pony to a Mexican
sheep he'd kill one of the wheelers.'

"Thar ain't none of us knows who this yere Cleopatra the Doc refers to
is, onless it's Colonel Sterett, who edits