Her hangin' out agin me and her paw tickled them eatin'-house Mamies turrible. They thought her idear of earnin' her own money, and then goin' East to be a' op'ra singer, was just _grand_. But the rest of the town felt diff'rent. And behind my back all the women folks and the boys that knowed me was sayin' it was a darned shame. They figgered that a gal gone loco on the stage proposition wouldn't make _no_ kind of a wife fer a cow-punch. "Would _she_ camp down in Oklahomaw," they says, "and cook three meals a day, and wash out blue shirts, when she's set on gittin' up afore a passel of highflyers and yelpin' 'Marguerite'? _Nixey._" Next thing, one day at Silverstein's, here come the parson to me, lookin' worried. "Cupid," he says, "git on the good side of that gal as quick as ever you can--and marry her. The stage is a' _awful_ place fer a decent gal. Keep her offen it if you love her soul. And if I can help, just whistle." I said thank y', but I was feard marryin' was a long way off. "But, Alec," goes on the parson, "that Simpson has gone back t' Noo York----" "_What?_" "Yas. He put all his doctor truck into his gasoline wagon last night and choo-chooed outen town. If _he's_ there, and _she_ goes, wal,--I don't like the looks of it." "I don't neither, parson. He's crooked as a cow-path, that feller. Have you tole her paw?" "No, but I will," says the parson. I went over to the deepot again. Havin' done a little thinkin', I wasn't so scairt about Simpson by now. 'Cause why? Wal, y' see, I knowed Mace didn't have no money; ole Sewell wouldn't give her none; and she wasn't the kind of a gal t' borra. So it was likely she'd be in Briggs fer quite a spell. I found Up-State settin' outside the eatin'-house. I sit down byside him. Allus, them days, whenever I come in sight of the station, he was a-hangin' 'round, y' savvy. He'd be on a truck, say, 'r mebbe on the edge of the platform. If it was all quiet inside at the lunch-counter, he'd be watchin' the mesquite, and sorta swingin' his shoes. But if Macie was singin', he'd be all scrooched over with his face covered up--and pretty quiet. When Macie sung, it was The Mohawk Vale ev'ry time. Now, that seemed funny, bein' she was mad at me and that was my fav'rite song. Then, it didn't seem so funny. One of the eatin'-house gals tole me, confidential, that Up-State had lots of little chins with Macie acrosst the lunch-counter, and that The Mohawk Vale was "by request." _I_ didn't keer. Let Up-State talk to her as much as he wanted to. _He_ couldn't make me jealous--not on you' life! I wasn't the finest lookin' man in Oklahomaw, and I wasn't on right good terms with Mace. But Up-State--wal, Up-State was pretty clost t' crossin' the Big Divide.