“‘I told her,’ he said, ‘I’d marry her, an’ take keer o’ her the rest o’ her life, like no woman wuz ever tuk keer of in Silver Valley, an’ ef Angie Sue come home she’d have to begin smilin’ at the gate er she’d never git inter the house, an’ Ann told me to find me a good woman an’ let her alone!’ “‘She’s afeard Curt’ll come back an’ kill ye, Nathe,’ I told him. “‘Yes,’ he says, ‘Curt’s comin’ to kill me! That’s why he sent in his brag. So’s I could have my trigger ready.’ “‘Shucks,’ I said, ‘he’s a big coward; he’ll never come.’ “‘’Course he won’t,’ says Nathe, ‘but that don’t hep me ef I kain’t make Ann believe it. Git me a good woman, she says, an’ let her alone! It ’ud serve her almighty right ef I did.’ “‘You won’t do that, Nathe,’ I says, an’ he said: ‘No, I’ll hang around Aim fer the rest o’ my life, waitin’ fer a chance to lick her shoes!’ “‘That won’t be much to do,’ I told him. ‘Her shoes ain’t bigger than a thimble.’ ‘No, they ain’t,’ he says, an’ took the all-over trimmles. ‘I’m clean crazy, Ranz,’ he says. “He mulled around fer maybe a month, kickin’ at his luck, an’ tryin’ to break pore little Ann, an’ the very day Mis’ Baker told me that Ann couldn’t hold out agin him much longer, he tied up with Nan Tittiewad.” Uncle Ranz paused once more, and Aunt Lizy, always at the gap, and now evidently big with information, darted in. “Her name wuzn’t Tittiewad. I knowed her folks that year me an’ Dan lived out in Jackson County. Her name wuz Benson, an’ her fam’ly wuz sort o’ bigetty. She married Jim Sluter the fust time. Jim’s father wuz called Taterwad ’cause he stole a wad o’ ’taters onct, not more’n a good mess, an’ wuz carryin’ ’em home when he wuz ketched with ’em. His name wuz Ham Sluter, but folks called him Ham Taterwad after that, an’ from him it went to his whole fam’ly. When Jim married Nan Benson, they called him Jim Taterwad after his father, an’ Nan would git so mad about it they told her they’d change it to Tittiewad ef that ’ud suit her better, an’ the madder she got the tighter that name stuck to her. Jim an’ her didn’t git along. They fit up an’ down the road, till fin’ly Jim left her, an’ nobody ever knowed what become of him. He got clear away from Nan. But they kept callin’ her Nan Tittiewad, the same as ever, ’cause it fitted her, I reckon, an’ it follered her wherever she went. I could ’a’ told Nathe all about her, but he wuzn’t sayin’ much to folks around home right then. He met Nan one day in Carson, an’ went round to the boardin’-house where she put up. They talked all night, an’ the next mornin’ they went to the court-house an’ got married.” Aunt Lizy was breathless from the hurried discharge of her burden, and Uncle Ranz came in leisurely.