Millie Eckers, with her arms around his waist, rode behind Robert Burns toward the county seat one spring morning to get married. But before they got there along came Joe Fultz, a justice of the peace, to whom they told their intent. Joe said the middle of the road on horseback was as good a place as any for a pair to be spliced, so then and there he had them join right hands. When they were pronounced man and wife Robert handed Joe a frayed greenback in exchange for the signed certificate of marriage. Joe Eckers always carried a supply of blank documents in his saddlebags to meet any emergency that might arise within his bailiwick. The justice of the peace pocketed his fee, wished Mister and Mistress Burns a long and happy married life, and rode away, and Robert turned his mare's nose back toward Little Goose Creek from whence they had come. Some said, soon as they heard about Millie and Robert being married on horseback right in the middle of the road, that no good would come of it. As for the preacher he said right out that while the justice of the peace was within his rights, he had observed in his long ministry that couples so wed were sure to meet with misfortune--married on horseback and without the blessing of an Apostle of the Book. Scarcely had Millie and Robert settled down to housekeeping than things began to go wrong. One morning when the dew was still on the grass Millie went out to milk. "Bossy had roamed away off ferninst the thicket," she told Robert, "and ginst I got there to where she was usin' I scratched the calf of my leg on a briar." Robert eyed her swollen limb. "Seein' your meat black like it is and the risin' in your calf so angry, I'm certain you've got dew pizen." Sure enough she had. Millie lay for days and when the rising came to a head in a place or two, Robert lanced it with the sharp blade of his penknife. Some weeks later old Doc Robbins who chanced by wondered how Millie had escaped death from blood poison from the knife blade, until the young husband told casually how when he was a little set along child he had seen an old doctor dip the blade of a penknife in a boiling kettle of water and lance a carbuncle on another's neck. He had done the same for Millie. No sooner was she up and about than something else happened. Millie and Robert had just the one cow but soon they had none. Even so Millie said things might have been worse. "It could have been Robert that was taken." And he said, bearing their loss stoically, "What is to be will be, if it comes in the night."