r he would
wring its neck.

"So Hank and Willomene stayed a week up in Livingston on her money, and
then he fetched her back to Gardner, and bought their grub, and bride
and groom came up to the camp we had on Galena Creek.

"She had never slep' out before. She had never been on a hawss, neither.
And she mighty near rolled off down into Pitchstone Canyon, comin' up by
the cut-off trail. Why, seh, I would not willingly take you through that
place, except yu' promised me yu' would lead your hawss when I said
to. But Hank takes the woman he had married, and he takes heavy-loaded
pack-hawsses. 'Tis the first time such a thing has been known of in the
country. Yu' remember them big tall grass-topped mountains over in the
Hoodoo country, and how they descends slam down through the cross-timber
that yu' can't scatcely work through afoot, till they pitches over into
lots an' lots o' little canyons, with maybe two inches of water runnin'
in the bottom? All that is East Fork water, and over the divide is
Clark's Fork, or Stinkin' Water, if yu' take the country yondeh to the
southeast. But any place yu' go is them undesirable steep slopes, and
the cut-off trail takes along about the worst in the business.

"Well, Hank he got his outfit over it somehow, and, gentlemen, hush!
but yu'd ought t've seen him and that poor girl pull into our camp. Yu'd
cert'nly never have conjectured them two was a weddin' journey. He was
leadin', but skewed around in his saddle to jaw back at Willomene for
riding so ignorant. Suppose it was a thing she was responsible for, yu'd
not have talked to her that-a-way even in private; and hyeh was the
camp a-lookin', and a-listenin', and some of us ashamed. She was setting
straddleways like a mountain, and between him and her went the three
packanimals, plumb shiverin' played out, and the flour--they had two
hundred pounds--tilted over hellwards, with the red-tailed parrot
shoutin' landslides in his cage tied on top o' the leanin' sacks.

"It was that mean to see, that shameless and unkind, that even a
thoughtless kid like the McLean boy felt offended, and favorable to some
sort of remonstrance. 'The son-of-a--!' he said to me. 'The son-of-a--!
If he don't stop, let's stop him.' And I reckon we might have.

"But Hank he quit. 'Twas plain to see he'd got a genu-wine scare comin'
through Pitchstone Canyon, and it turned him sour, so he'd hardly talk
to us, but just mumbled 'How!' kind o' gruff, when the boys