'Round the bend from towards Albuquerque come the pay-car. Now, the pay-car, she stops just one minute fer ev'ry section-hand, and them section-hands was compelled to git into line and be quick about it, 'r not git they money. So they didn't have no spare time. They let go of Bergin's rope and run--the section-boss leadin'. The sheriff, he slung the rope to one side--and the widda goes into his arms. "Little woman," he says, lookin' down at her, "I'll--I'll be a good father to the boy." Then he kissed her. (Wal, that's about all you could reas'nably expect from _Bergin_.) Next thing, he borraed my gun and just kinda happened over towards the pay-car. And when a cholo got his time and left the line, he showed him the way he was to go. And you bet he _minded!_ Wal, things come out _fine_. A big museum in Noo York bought that rock (If you don't believe it, just go to that museum and you'll see it a-settin' out in front--big as life.) A-course, Mrs. Bridger got a nice little pile of money fer it, and paid Curry the balance she owed him. Then, the sheriff got Mrs. Bridger! And the bunch that didn't git her? Wal, the bunch that didn't git her just natu'lly got _left!_ CHAPTER FIVE THINGS GIT STARTED WRONG UP to the day of the sheriff's weddin', I reckon I was about the happiest feller that's ever been in these parts. Gee! but I was in high spirits! It'd be Macie's and my turn next, I figgered, and if the ole man didn't like it, he could just natu'lly lump it. So when I walked through Briggs, why, I hit both sides of the street, exac'ly as if I was three sheets in the wind. But--this was one time when you' friend Cupid was just a little bit too previous. And I want to say right here that _no_ feller needs to think he's the hull shootin'-match with a gal, and has the right-a-way, like a wild-cat ingine on a' open track, just 'cause she's ast him to write in her autograph-album. It don't mean such a blamed lot, neither, if his picture is stuck 'longside of hern on top of the organ. Them signs is encouragin', a-course; but he'd best take his coat off and _git to work_. Even when she's give all the others the G. B., and has gone to church with him about forty Sunday evenin's, hand runnin', and has allus saved him the grand march and the last waltz at the Fireman's Ball, and mebbe six 'r seven others bysides, why, even _then_ it's a toss-up. Yas, ma'am. It took hard knocks t' learn me that they's nothin' dead certain short of the parson's "amen." Y' see, you can plug a' Injun, and kick a dawg, and take a club to a mule; but when it's a gal, and a feller thinks a turrible lot of her, and she's so all-fired skittish he cain't manage her, and so eludin' he cain't find her no two times in the same place, _what's he goin' to do?_ Wal, they ain't no reg'lar way of proceedin'--ev'ry man has got to blaze his own trail.