Lewis Alfred Henry
The Sunset Trail

With Rattlesnake Sanders it was the old, old story of love at first sight. His ideals were not those of the critical Cimarron Bill, and he beheld with different eyes. In those high cheekbones, irregular nose, wide mouth, and freckled face he discovered charms. Miss Barndollar to the besotted Rattlesnake was a lamp of beauty. The smitten one forgot his hunger, forgot the list of edibles that Miss Barndollar had told off, and sat tongue-tied.

Life is replete of such dulcet mysteries – the mystery of Miss Barndollar’s ugliness and Rattlesnake Sander’s instant love. It was such to inspire the late farmer philosopher and almanac maker when he musingly related the paradox:

“They do say Love is blind, but I’m dinged if some fellers can’t see more in their gals than I can.”

Miss Barndollar, waiting to be instructed as to the appetite of Rattlesnake Sanders, grew impatient with his rapt staring. She repeated her announcement:

“Roast beef, b’iled buffalo tongue, plover potpie, fried antelope steak, an’ baked salt hoss an’ beans!”

Sixty seconds later, the fatuous Rattlesnake still silently staring, Miss Barndollar broke a bread-plate on his head and went her way.

It was like clenching the driven nail – that bread-plate episode. The jolt to his faculties crystallised the love in Rattlesnake which before had been in solution, and he became Miss Barndollar’s slave.

And yet it is no more than justice to the lady to explain that her bread-plate descent upon the spellbound Rattlesnake was the fruit of a misunderstanding. Being unaware of what soft sentiments she had inspired, Miss Barndollar conceived his glances to have been bestowed upon her in mockery. This was shown when she passed the cashier as she swept from the room.

“What was the trouble, Calamity?” asked the cashier, who had witnessed Miss Barndollar’s reproof, without knowing its cause. “What did that jayhawker do?”

“Which he stared at me,” replied the outraged Miss Barndollar. “I’ll teach sech horned toads that if my face is freckled, I’m a lady all the same.”

When and where and how the headlong Rattlesnake found time and place to woo Miss Barndollar went unexplained to Dodge. Its earliest news was when the whisper leaped from lip to lip that Miss Barndollar and Rattlesnake were to wed.

“Is that so, Rattlesnake?” asked Mr. Short, referring to the event as promised by gossip. “Is it straight? You’ll excuse me, Rattlesnake, if I adds that I hopes an’ trusts it is. Dodge wouldn’t stand no triflin’ with the ontried heart of Calamity, an’ if you-all is simply flirtin’ with the affections of that pore girl I wouldn’t fill your moccasins for a small clay farm.”

“Flirtin’,” retorted the scandalised Rattlesnake. “Luke, you insults me! Calamity an’ me is goin’ to hook up followin’ the spring round-up.”

After making this declaration, Rattlesnake, in a kind of ecstatic hysteria at the glowing future before him, withdrew to a corner of the Long Branch and lapsed into a dance which had its rise with the Cheyennes, and was known among its copper coloured authors as the Love Dance of the Catamounts.

While Rattlesnake Sanders was thus relieving his soul, Cimarron Bill, who was present, regarded his mad doings with a dubious brow.

“That Rattlesnake person’s locoed!” said Cimarron, turning sadly to Mr. Short. “I can’t read signal smokes an’ don’t know the meanin’ of signs if that maverick don’t wind up in a crazy house, cuttin’ paper dolls.” “He ain’t locoed,” explained Mr. Short, with a confidence born of experiences that went beyond those of Cimarron Bill. “That Rattlesnake boy’s in love. They allers ghost-dance an’ go pirootin’ ’round eediotic that a-way.”

Cimarron Bill was not convinced, and took later opportunity to say as much to Mr. Masterson. He urged that the nuptials threatened by Miss Barndollar and Rattlesnake Sanders be suppressed. Cimarron insisted that as Sheriff of Ford it was Mr. Masterson’s business to interfere.

“Which the way I regyards these proceedin’s,” explained Cimarron, “they’re a menace to the peace of Dodge. Them two people’ll fight worse’n McBride an’ Bridget did. You ought to stop ’em, Bat.”

“How’d you stop ’em?” returned Mr. Masterson. “You can stop folks shooting one another, but you can no more stop ’em marryin’ one another than you can stop a cyclone.”

“Just the same,” said Cimarron, stubbornly, “it’s your dooty to try.”

This conversation took place in the door of Mr. Kelly’s Alhambra. While Mr. Masterson and the gloomy Cimarron were talking, Miss Barndollar and Rattlesnake Sanders came down the street. As the pair arrived opposite Mr. Masterson and Cimarron, the infatuated Rattlesnake jocosely placed his arm about Miss Barndollar’s waist. Whereupon that virgin coyly bestowed upon Rattlesnake a resounding blow.

“I’ll teach ye!” cried Miss Barndollar, meanwhile giving Rattlesnake an arch look, “I’ll teach ye whose waist you’re tamperin’ with! I’ll nacherally swat ye ev’ry time y’ do it.”

“Ain’t she got sperit!” exclaimed Rattlesnake, winking a blissful eye at Mr. Masterson. “Thar’s nothin’ Texas about her! She’s due to grade as cornfed, my Calamity is, or I’m a shorthorn!”

The happy pair continued onward to Mr. Wright’s store and set about pricing pots and kettles and what other bric-à-brac may become the basis of a primitive housekeeping.

“Thar!” said Cimarron Bill, decisively. “You can now tell how that eediot Rattlesnake ain’t cap’ble of se’f-protection. It’s not only ag’in your oaths of office, but it’s inhooman not to interfere. Before them two has been married a week, that Calamity girl’ll t’ar into pore Rattlesnake with her ten nails an’ make saddlestrings of him.”

“That’s your view, Cimarron,” retorted Mr. Masterson. “Now to my mind Rattlesnake and Calamity’ll get along as peaceful as two pups in a basket. Besides, speaking of public interest, do you know how many inhabitants Dodge has lost during the official year?”

“No,” said Cimarron Bill, “I don’t. But whatever has that got to do with Calamity ropin’ up this yere innocent Rattlesnake?”

“There were seven to get bumped off,” continued Mr. Masterson, disregarding the question, “exclusive of McBride’s Bridget. Seven; and I don’t count Mexicans and non-resident cowboys who came in with the herds and expired in the natural course of festivals which they, themselves, inaugurated. Seven! That’s knocking a hole in Dodge’s census.”

“But why,” protested the honest Cimarron, “should you-all punish Rattlesnake for that? He don’t down any of them seven. He’s pulled his gun jest once this year, an’ then he only busts the crust on Kell, an’ no harm done.”

“No harm!” interjected Mr. Masterson, severely.

“Whatever was the harm?” retorted the obstinate Cimarron. “Kell’s inside thar runnin’ his joint, ain’t he? Besides the fault was Kell’s. Rattlesnake rings in a cold hand on Kell, as a gent every now an’ then will, an’ Kell taunts him about it. If Kell’s goin’ to comment on a cold hand he’d ought to do it with his six-shooter. To go tantalisin’ Rattlesnake about it with his mouth that a-way, makes what I calls a case of crim’nal carelessness, an’ leaves Kell responsible. But whether it does or not, why rooin Rattlesnake’s life with this Calamity lady because of them other seven? Thar’s neither jestice nor reason in it.”

“Cimarron,” replied Mr. Masterson, disgustedly, “you’re forever roping at the wrong steer. There’s no ruin in the business. This is the idea: We lose seven. Now when Rattlesnake and Calamity are married, they may do something to repair our loss. If they were to jump in and have seven children, that would make it an even break, wouldn’t it?”

“Still,” contended Cimarron Bill, “I don’t see why the losses of Dodge should be saddled onto Rattlesnake. It ain’t right to heap burdens on him that, properly regyarded, belongs to the commoonity.”

“Well,” observed Mr. Masterson, turning on his heel for a stroll down the street, “I won’t dispute all day with you. Rattlesnake’s of full age, free, and half white, and if he wants to wed Calamity it’s his American privilege.”

“Which you could say the same,” returned Cimarron Bill, “if Rattlesnake was aimin’ at sooicide.”

It is to be supposed that Miss Barndollar and Rattlesnake Sanders would have drifted quietly and uneventfully to the altar had it not been for the intervention of an accident. Rattlesnake was aiding Mr. Trask in cutting out a particular mule from the bunch in his corrals. His pony, slipping with its unshod hoofs, fell and in falling broke Rattlesnake’s left leg – both bones – below the knee.

There was no resident surgeon in Dodge. There had been; but an Eastern past having found him out, he vanished between sun and sun. In the emergency presented by Rattlesnake’s fractured leg a surgeon was summoned from Cimarron.

The Cimarron practitioner was a young, sappy, callow, pinefeather form of scientist, excessively in the springtime of his career, and no one to excite confidence. Rattlesnake Sanders debated him with distrustful eye, but, since nothing better presented, was fain to surrender to him his broken leg. The sappy one set the leg and withdrew, programming a call for the next day.

Everything, according to Cimarron Bill who came upon the scene an hour after the sappy one departed, was wrong about that leg-setting. The bandage was an error, the splints were a crime. Their plain effect was to torture the stricken Rattlesnake. The views of Rattlesnake fell in with those of Cimarron Bill. Between groans and maledictions, heaped upon the sappy one, he wholly agreed with him.

The pair were alone at the moment, and acting in concert they removed the offending bandages and splints. Giving the patient a bottle of arnica wherewith to temporarily console his aches, Cimarron, with a fine conceit of his powers that commonly would have challenged admiration, walked over to the carpenter shop in Mr. Trask’s corral, and fashioned new splints after original designs of his own. Then, with the help of Rattlesnake, he re-set the leg and restored the bandages as seemed to him best and mete. Following these deeds the worthy Cimarron and his patient took a drink, looked upon their work, and pronounced it good.

Those feats in medicine and surgery were performed in an upper chamber of the Wright House which on the spur of the moment had been set aside as a hospital in the interests of Rattlesnake Sanders. The first to learn of them, beyond the two therein engaged, was Miss Barndollar. She had been with her beloved Rattlesnake while the lawful sappy one was busy about his repairs. Coming again into the room following the exploits of Cimarron Bill, her glance of love was sharp to mark the change.

“Whatever’s up?” asked the wondering Miss Barndollar.

“Nothin’s up,” replied Rattlesnake. “Only me an’ Cimarron, not approvin’ of them malpractices of that jacklaig doctor, has had a new deal. An’ that reminds me,” he continued, turning to Cimarron, who was surveying the bandaged result with a satisfied air; “give me my pistol. I’ll keep it in bed with me a whole lot, an’ when that igneramus comes chargin’ in to-morry mornin’ I’ll stand him off.”

“But you mustn’t shoot,” warned Cimarron, as he brought the weapon. “When he shows up, tell him to pull his freight. An’ if he hesitates, sort o’ take to menacin’ at him with the gun. But don’t shoot none; Bat’s gettin’ that partic’ler he wouldn’t stand it.”

The composed manners of both Rattlesnake and Cimarron worked upon the credulity of Miss Barndollar. In the face of so much confidence it was difficult to doubt. Still, she cross-questioned Cimarron when she found him alone on the Wright House porch.

“Be you shore,” she asked, “that Rattlesnake’s laig’ll come right? Which if it’s out o’ plumb when he’s cured, I’ll shorely make you hard to find!”

“Rattlesnake’s laig,” returned Cimarron, reassuringly, “will eemerge from them splints as straight as Luke Short’s deal box, an’ said implement of faro-bank has allers been reckoned the straightest thing in town. You need give yoursel’f no oneasiness, Calamity.”

“Which I’ll take your word,” responded Miss Barndollar. “But if that laig ain’t all that heart could wish, I’ll keep you plenty oneasy for the balance of your days!”

Mr. Masterson, when given word of the matter, was somewhat troubled by Cimarron’s unlooked for début in the field of surgery. Like Miss Barndollar, Mr. Masterson asked questions.

“Did you ever set anybody’s leg before?” he inquired.

“Did I ever set any sport’s laigs before!” retorted Cimarron Bill, with a yawn of careless indifference. “I’ve set twenty cows’ laigs, an’ what’s the difference? Thar’s nothin’ to the play. It’s as easy as fittin’ together the two ends of a broken stick, with your eyes shet. Of course them doctor sharps raise the long yell about it bein’ difficult, aimin’ tharby to bluff you out o’ your bankroll.”

Upon his arrival next day, the sappy one was much confounded to find his patient propped up in bed, smoking a bad cigar. His confusion was increased when the patient drew a Colt’s-45 from beneath the blankets, surveying him the while with a loathely scowl. The sappy one thought that Rattlesnake Sanders had added insanity to a broken leg. This theory was strengthened when the forbidding Rattlesnake waved him from the room with his weapon. The sappy one went; he said that he loved his art, but not well enough to attempt its practice within point-blank range of a hostile six-shooter. When the sappy one found himself again in the street, Jack, who, although the Weekly Planet had been dead for months, was still beset of all the instincts of a newsmaker, laid bare to him the interference of Cimarron Bill in the affairs of that fractured leg. The sappy one waxed exceedingly bitter, and spoke freely of Cimarron Bill.

“He called you an empiric,” said Jack, relating the strictures of the sappy one to Cimarron an hour later.

“A what?”

“An empiric.”

“Spell it,” and Cimarron drew a deep, resentful breath.

“E-m-p-i-r-i-c.”

“Whatever does it mean?”

“It means a four-flush,” said Jack, who was liberal in definitions.

“I won’t shoot him,” observed Cimarron, after a profound pause; “no I won’t spring no gun on him, for that might prove disturbin’ to the public peace. Which I’ll merely burn him at the stake.”

The sappy one was miles away from Dodge when these flame and fagot threats were formulated; and as he took pains to remain away thereafter, he gave Cimarron Bill scant chance to execute them. At long range, however, he continued to make his malignant influence felt. He sent for Miss Barndollar and told her that Rattlesnake’s one remaining hope was to have that mismanaged leg re-broken and re-set. Failing these measures, the sappy one gave it as his professional opinion that the leg would look like an interrogation point. As an upcome, Miss Barndollar came back weeping to Dodge.

“But the laig’s O. K.,” remonstrated Rattlesnake Sanders, when Miss Barndollar unfurled to him the sappy one’s predictions. “It’s comin’ round as solid as a sod house.”

“But you’ll do it to please me, Rattlesnake,” coaxed Miss Barndollar. “I’m a proud girl, an’ I don’t want to wed no gent with a laig like a corkscrew.”

Rattlesnake was shaken by the tender persistency of Miss Barndollar. However, he said that he must see Cimarron Bill.

“What do you think yourse’f, Cimarron?” asked Rattlesnake earnestly, when the worthy Cimarron had been rounded up by Jack for the conference.

“That limb,” observed Cimarron, judgmatically, and cocking a wise eye like a crow looking into a jug, “that limb, as framed up, is a credit to us both. It’s simply aces before the draw! Don’t tech it.”

“But Calamity allows she’ll throw me down about that weddin’.”

Miss Barndollar was not in the room, and Cimarron took on a look of grim cunning.

“Ev’ry cloud has a silver linin’,” remarked Cimarron, enigmatically. “Rattlesnake, this yere will turn out the luckiest laig you ever had.”

Following these foggy announcements, Cimarron said that it would be a point of honour with him to prevent any intromission with the leg of Rattlesnake Sanders.

“This offensive sawbones,” he explained, “publically allooded to me as a empirick. In so doin’ he compels me to go through the way I’m headed. I shall consider any attempt to break that laig again as an attack upon my character, an’ conduct myse’f accordin’ with a gun.”

“That sounds on the level,” observed Rattlesnake to Miss Barndollar, who had come into the room in time to hear the ultimatum of Cimarron. “For us to go tamperin’ with this yere member that a-way, would be equiv’lent to castin’ aspersions on Cimarron.”

“You never loved me!” murmured Miss Barndollar, beginning to cry.

“Calamity!” exclaimed Rattlesnake, reproachfully. “You’re my soul!”

“An’ yet,” she sobbed, rocking herself in her chair, “you refooses my least request! Is it love to ast me to go through life as the wife of a party with a game laig?”

“But Calamity!”

“I knows gents who’d break their hearts for me, let alone their laigs!”

Rattlesnake looked appealingly at Cimarron, who was bearing himself with studied dignity.

“Which you’ll nacherally thank me a heap for this some day!” said Cimarron, replying to the look.

“Calamity,” cooed Rattlesnake, “let me have a word alone with Cimarron.”

“You-all can have what words you please,” snorted Miss Barndollar, beginning to dry her indignant eyes, “you can have what words you please with this person. But I wants to saw it off on you right yere, Rattlesnake Sanders, that no lady would be jestified in entrustin’ her footure to a gent who’d go argufyin’ an’ h’ar-splittin’ about a triflin’ matter like this. You’ll either get that laig fixed, or our engagement’s at an end. Yes, sir,” concluded Miss Barndollar in a sudden gust of temper, “it’s no longer a laig. Which it’s now ceased to be a laig and become a principle,” and Miss Barndollar flounced from the room.

“The first day I can ride,” groaned Rattlesnake, “I’ll shore descend upon that sawbones all spraddled out, an’ obtain a spec’men of his h’ar!”

Calming himself, Rattlesnake discoursed sagely and at length with Cimarron, saying that he was in favour of yielding to the demands of Miss Barndollar. The leg could easily be rebroken. Both he and Cimarron would of course understand that it did not require such treatment. They would agree that it was simply a concession to Miss Barndollar, and not to be held as reflecting on Cimarron.

“Because, d’ye see,” said Rattlesnake, “take it every way from the jack, I wouldn’t miss marryin’ Calamity if it meant breakin’ a dozen laigs. I think we’d better let her have her way, Cimarron. You don’t know girls like I do; but the fact is, you allers want to humour ’em in little things so’s to have your own way in big ones. You call her in, Cimarron, an’ tell her she’s plumb right about this fool laig.”

In the teeth of this specious argument, Cimarron still persisted with his objections. He said that the attitude of Miss Barndollar was born of vanity. He pointed out that the much debated leg was as straight as a gun barrel. He re-told the insult put upon himself in the epithet of empiric. Constantly, he hinted that untold good lay behind his present obstinacy, and that Rattlesnake would admit his gratitude therefore in days to come. He closed by suggesting that they send for Mr. Masterson.

With a talent for compromise, and prone to middle paths, Mr. Masterson believed that, inasmuch as a fortnight had already elapsed, Miss Barndollar ought not to object to the leg continuing as it then was. Rattlesnake Sanders would give his promise to have the leg instantly refractured in event of any final queerness.

Upon this proposal being carried to Miss Barndollar by Jack, who was delegated to the trust by Rattlesnake and Mr. Masterson, she called that youth a “cub prairie dog” and demanded his authority for meddling with two throbbing hearts. Jack, deeply chagrined, pled the commission of Rattlesnake and Mr. Masterson. Miss Barndollar wept, and Jack, being mercurial and a child of active sympathies, wept with her. In the end Miss Barndollar dried her eyes, kissed Jack and bid him return to the callous Rattlesnake and say that she had cast him out of her heart forever.

“Tell him,” said Miss Barndollar, “that he has shown himse’f keerless of my feelin’s an’ I’m mighty lucky to be saved in time.”

Cimarron Bill wore a brow of cloudy victory when Jack made his report, while Rattlesnake Sanders swore in a discouraged way. As for Mr. Masterson, he counseled Rattlesnake to be of cheer, and gave it as his belief that Miss Barndollar would come back to his arms in time. Mr. Masterson was on the brink of basing this conclusion on the fact that Miss Barndollar would not be able to find another who would have her, but caught himself on the verge. He said instead that she was only testing Rattlesnake’s love.

“Just let everything go as it lays,” concluded Mr. Masterson, consolingly, “and when you are out and around again, it’s two for one that you and Calamity’ll be like turtledoves.”

Rattlesnake said he hoped so, while Cimarron shook his head.

“That’s the luckiest laig you ever broke, Rattlesnake,” was the mysterious remark of Cimarron as the conference adjourned.

Rattlesnake Sanders, being recovered, invited the judgment of Mr. Masterson concerning his legs.

“What I wants,” explained Rattlesnake, “is an opinion at once onprejewdyced an’ offishul, an’ nacherally I asts Bat.”

Mr. Masterson, after a most critical survey of Rattlesnake from, as he himself expressed it, “foretop of fetlock,” gave his honour for it that nothing showed amiss.

“Your leg,” said Mr. Masterson, “is as straight as it ever was.”

“Straighter,” chimed in the confident Cimarron, who stood at his elbow. “Rattlesnake’s laigs, on account of bein’ frequent storm-soaked about the herds an’ then dried preematoorly by camp fires, was a heap warped. Now they’re as par’llel as two fiddle strings. I ain’t the gent to say it, seein’ I set that fracture myse’f, but it’s my view Rattlesnake’s laigs quits winner on the deal.”

These assurances gave mighty satisfaction to Rattlesnake Sanders. So much set up by them was he, that he sought a meeting with Miss Barndollar, meditating in her shell-like ear a loving word. The lady was in the Wright House kitchen, and observing her lover’s approach made haste to slam and bolt the door in his adoring face. Sinking under this rebuff, Rattlesnake withdrew to the Alhambra, and became grievously drunk.

The next day, Rattlesnake Sanders again attempted converse with his obdurate sweetheart as she was coming from Mr. Wright’s store. She repelled him with double scorn.

“Not bein’ desirous,” observed Miss Barndollar on this withering occasion, “of the attentions of no sech tarripin as you, I forbids you speakin’ to me now or yereafter.”

It is to be supposed that a deal of Miss Barndollar’s hardness was the growth of pique. Now that the unreasonable character of her surgical demands had been demonstrated, her resentment was multiplied. Also, because of this second effort at an interview, she complained to Mr. Masterson.

“Be you Sheriff of Ford I’d like for to ast?” she demanded.

“Why?” asked Mr. Masterson, humble but defensive. Mr. Masterson owned a hare’s heart where a woman was concerned, and his instinct was for the fugitive and the non-committal. Wherefore he put the query, being heedful to throw into his tone a propitiating quaver of apology: “Why? What’s fetched loose?”

“Nothin’,” returned Miss Barndollar, in her most icy manner, “only I dee-mands protection from that profligate.” Here she pointed a chilling finger at the forlorn Rattlesnake who, with head bowed and in an attitude of deepest dejection, stood leaning in the Long Branch door.

“Who, Rattlesnake?” returned Mr. Masterson, with a gentle purpose of reconciliation. “Why, he dotes on you! He loves you like a prairie fire.”

“Which the love,” said Miss Barndollar, with a sudden vehemence that sent shafts of terror to the soul of Mr. Masterson, “of sech miscreants is the worst outrage they can commit. I’m a weak female, an’ I dee-mands protection. Likewise, you’d better give it to me, Bat Masterson, or I’ll lay up trouble for your gray ha’rs.”

“Taking her up one side and down the other, Rattlesnake,” observed Mr. Masterson, in the confab which in deference to the threats of Miss Barndollar he deemed it wise to hold with that young man, “my notion is that you’d better hit the trail for the White Woman, an’ give Calamity a chance to cool. She’s a whole lot heated just now, but most likely in a month, or may be in two, it’ll be safe to say ‘Howdy!’ to her, and bid her the time of day.”

“Then you’d give her up?” asked the mournful Rattlesnake.

“Only for a spell,” replied Mr. Masterson, cheerfully. “But you see yourself there’s nothing to be gained by hankering ’round her at this time. The way she feels you couldn’t get near enough to her to hand her a ripe peach. Later, it’ll be different, and I shall hope to shake a moccasin at your wedding.”

Rattlesnake mused a moment, and then broke forth with unexpected spirit.

“Which I’ll take your steer, Bat. Also, it’s the last I’ll have to do with that Calamity. I shore should not regret surrenderin’ a lady so narrow as to hold that the only evidence a gent can give of his affection is to go about cripplin’ himse’f promiscus.”

“Now don’t come to any rash decisions,” urged the prudent Mr. Masterson. “Dodge wants those nuptials to come off, and if you’ll give Calamity time to round on herself, they will. She’s only a bit peevish with you for getting well, but that’ll fade away. You go back to your cattle, Rattlesnake, and leave me to ride herd on Calamity. The moment she begins to melt I’ll send you word.”

It has been the puzzle of every age that woman, with her infinite superiority over man in all that is morally, mentally and physically beautiful, should be seldom or never satisfied. Within three days after Rattlesnake Sanders rode away, Miss Barndollar met Mr. Masterson in the thoroughfares of Dodge and, with tears guttering her freckled cheeks, openly charged upon him the crime of their cruel separation.

“Rattlesnake’s the only gent I ever loved!” she sobbed, “an’ yere you onfeelin’ly cuts in an’ stampedes him out o’ my very arms.”

Mr. Masterson was somewhat discouraged, and extricated himself from the interview with what polite speed he might. None the less, about the roots of his soul he felt a self-gratulatory flutter. His remedy had worked; his advice was justified. He had recommended for the haughty coldness of Miss Barndollar a course of what Christian Scientists would describe as “absent treatment” and here was the lady yielding to it like a willow to the wind. Mr. Masterson had cause for exultation, and unbent moderately to that sentiment. Withal he was practical, and lost no time in moving to reunite the lovers. In this, however, Mr. Masterson was guilty of an error. He dispatched Cimarron to bring in Rattlesnake, when he should have sent the sympathetic Jack.

“Go over,” said Mr. Masterson to Cimarron, “and break the news to Rattlesnake. Tell him he wins, and that there’s nothing now to do but consider Calamity’s feelings.”

Cimarron Bill sullenly threw a saddle on a pony, and pointed away into the desolate north. His heart was not for this journey; it was to him as though he were summoning Rattlesnake not for his marriage but for his execution.

“Bat’s takin’ a heap on himse’f!” he muttered. “As for me; I washes my hands of the whole play.”

Mr. Masterson said afterward that Cimarron Bill, in that matter of the love-coil between Miss Barndollar and Rattlesnake, betrayed a side of his character hitherto unknown. Mr. Masterson should have reflected. Never before had he been called upon to consider Cimarron while under what peculiar pressures were here exerted. Deep within the inner recesses of Cimarron’s nature, abode objections to matrimony as rooted as the hills.

“An’ in partic’lar,” Cimarron had observed, when once he mooted the subject with Mr. Short as part of a review they were then and there making of the conjugal experiences of Mr. McBride and Bridget, “an’ in partic’lar I contends that if the world must have sech things as matrimony, then no gent should be pinned down to jest one wife. An’ for this reason,” he continued, waving an impressive paw: “It ain’t good sense. Is it good farobank sense to put your whole bundle on one kyard? No. Then it ain’t good weddin’ sense for to resk your whole heart on one lady. She may fall to lose, an’ then where be you at? It’s my idee that if a party must go ag’inst this weddin’ game, he’ll be safer if he spreads his bets.”

Holding fast to these beliefs, Cimarron Bill rode forth full of an unconscious willingness to play the marplot. He would deliver the message of Mr. Masterson; but he would deliver it in such fashion that, when the worst occurred, as it hereafter – according to his thinking – must most certainly occur, he, Cimarron, could felicitate himself with the reflection that he had in no sort contributed towards bringing that worst about. He would bear the message of Mr. Masterson; he would also proffer warnings all his own. Should the locoed Rattlesnake then persist in riding open-eyed to Dodge and to destruction – why, his blood be on his head!

It was in this frame that Cimarron Bill sat down to flap-jacks with Rattlesnake Sanders that night at the latter’s camp on the White Woman. And this was the conversation that passed between the pair:

“I’ve been sent over to rope you up, Rattlesnake,” quoth Cimarron. “Calamity says you’re to wash off your warpaint an’ report at the agency.”

“Does she still adhere to them demands about bustin’ my laig?” asked Rattlesnake. “Not that it much matters,” he added hastily, for the doughty resolve to see no more of Miss Barndollar, expressed to Mr. Masterson, had long since oozed away, “not that it matters. The round-ups are eight weeks away, an’ I’d easy be able to ride by then.”

After this exchange the two munched wordless flapjacks, diversified by mouthfuls of salt pork. Rattlesnake Sanders broke the silence.