th the
responsibility of the wedding-ring, license, minister's fee, and flowers
for the occasion. He herded us into the clerk's office to secure the
necessary papers, and the girl clerk that issued them was a stickler for
form. We gave our names, our parents' names, our ages, birth-places, and
previous states of servitude. I was getting ready to show her my
vaccination scar, when she turned coldly critical eyes on me and asked:
"Are you white?" This for a Virginian to answer was quite a blow.

We went to the minister's house, and since two witnesses were necessary,
the wife was called in from her washing. She came into the parlor drying
her hands on her apron, which she discarded by rolling up and tossing
into a chair. Ranger Fisk produced the ring, with a flourish, at the
proper moment, gave the minister his money, after all the "I do's" had
been said, and the wedding was over. So we were married. No wedding
march, no flower girls, no veil, no rice, no wedding breakfast. Just a
solemn promise to respect each other and be faithful. Perhaps the
promise meant just a little more to us because it was not smothered in
pomp.

For a wedding-trip we visited the cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon.
Here, hundreds of years ago, other newly married couples had set up
housekeeping and built their dreams into the walls that still tell the
world that we are but newcomers on this hemisphere.

The news of our marriage reached the Canyon ahead of us, and we found
our little cabin filled with our friends and their gifts. They spent a
merry evening with us and as we bade them goodnight we felt that such
friendship was beyond price indeed.

But after midnight! The great open spaces were literally filled with a
most terrifying and ungodly racket. I heard shrieks and shots, and tin
pans banging. Horrors! The cook was on another vanilla-extract
jamboree!! But--drums boomed and bugles blared. Ah, of course! The
Indians were on the warpath; I never entirely trusted those red devils.
I looked around for a means of defense, but the Chief told me not to be
alarmed--it was merely a "shivaree."

"Now, what might that be?" I inquired. I supposed he meant at least a
banshee, or at the very least an Irish wake! It was, however, nothing
more or less than our friends serenading us. They came inside, thirty
strong; the walls of the cabin fairly bulged. They played all sorts of
tricks on us, and just as they left someone dropped a handful of sulphur
on