"It don't seem hardly regular!" yelled the discomfited sheriff, skilfully avoiding a dangerous hummock and crashing through a mesquit-bush which whipped away his hat. "I'll--I'll do it for yuh, Mis' Gentry. I'll marry yuh as tight as I kin; but I can't stop drivin' for that, and I've forgot a whole lot how it goes. Are yuh all ready?" The desert had changed from its soft, yielding sand to a brown, flat floor of small stones and volcanic dust, fairly hard and unrutted. Pulling in dangerously close, the sheriff shifted his reins to one hand and faced them. The two wagons were racing neck and neck in a cloud of dust, Cassidy handling his lines with skill and growing satisfaction. From the body of the wagon under him, and quite distinguishable from the clatter of the horses' feet, came a series of sharp bumps as the unfortunate Tommy ricochetted from side to side. "Do yuh believe in the Constitution of the United States?" bellowed Jake. "_We do!_" pealed the woman. "Do yuh--whoa, there, Pet! Goll darn your hide!--do yuh solemnly swear never tuh fight no _duels_?" "What's that?" screamed the woman. "He said a 'duel'!" shouted Cassidy in her ear, above the uproar of the wheels. "Tell him _no_! We won't fight many duels!" "No! _No_ duels!" sang the woman. "And no aidin' or abettin'?" "No! No bettin' at all!" "Nor have any connection with any _duels_ whatsoever?" The widow looked puzzled. She didn't understand. What had _duels_ to do with solemn marriage? "It's all in the statutes, all right!" roared the sheriff angrily, as vast portions of the laws of Nevada fled from his agitated mind. "Mebbe you're both grand jurors now; I dunno. I think that's the oath. I reckon it's good and bindin', anyhow." He stood up in his buggy and shook the reins furiously over his horses' backs to escape from further legal entanglements. Leaning back over the folded top, he pointed at them magisterially with his whip. "And now, by the grace of God and me, Jake Bowerman, I hereby pronounce yuh man and wife!" With a roar of wheels, bad language, and a cloud of dust, the sheriff vanished in pursuit of the California line and the fleet-footed Tommy. Cassidy pulled his horses into a much-needed walk. The little woman sat down and felt for her bonnet. "_My!_" gasped Mrs. Cassidy, "_that_ was going some! Do yuh reckon we're really married?" The team, unheeded, had swung off from the desert into a road made in damper, richer soil. Not far ahead, now, the dark foliage of the Willow Spring ranch rose in cool relief against the grim, sun-reddened buttes beyond. Their passenger had some time since dropped quietly off and was walking ahead of the plodding horses.