“So help me, Ellis!” I says, “if she does him up, or plays crooked, or ain’t straight goods, you watch me be righteous vengeance. He’s going to take the whole blame business serious.” Ellis didn’t hardly agree. He said we could keep cases, and if the game didn’t look all straight, why, we could buy in and coax Shooting-star out. He said we had slathers of influence, if we was a mind to use it right. So we kinda laid low and kept our eyes peeled. That night Shooting-star commenced to knock the cooking—without cause, too. It was my week in the kitchen, and I don’t back down from no man on boiling coffee or making sour-dough biscuits. Besides them, I had beefsteak you could cut with a paper knife, it was that tender; and stewed prunes with the pits all oozing out; and fresh syrup made by burning a little white sugar in the pan first for flavor, and beans. And if that ain’t good enough for any white man to fill up on, I’ll hand over the dish towel and resign prompt and willing. All that evening Shooting-star set out in the kitchen and wrote. It sure be hard labor, because in the morning the stove was half-full uh burnt paper—where he’d backed up for a fresh start, I took it. Once in awhile he’d holler in to Ellis and me for our idea of the spelling of a word; and by keeping tab on them same words, we got an idea uh what the letter was like. I know we spelled “heartfelt” and “barren,” “generous” and “constant” and “prayer.” Ellis and me studied for an hour over how he figured on ringing in that last word; but Ellis has sure got a swell imagination, and when he thought about, “May the angels watch over you is my prayer,” we savvied right off that we were on the right trail. Say, I’d give a lot to uh seen that letter; I bet she was sure hot stuff. Shooting-star rode in and mailed it himself, which sure looked to us like he lacked confidence in Ellis and me. Then he dubbed around in a daze till he got the answer, which wasn’t long getting here, either. They sure seemed to go after that corresponding business enthusiastic, and as if they meant business. This here letter had her picture in it, and Ellis and me like to perjured our souls and twisted our necks plumb off trying to get a look at it. But Shooting-star wouldn’t let us see anything but the back; and he packed it around in his inside coat pocket between times, and we never could catch him with his coat off. It was plumb aggravating. Along about then he got extreme fastididus over what he eat, and bellyached over the cooking till Ellis and me was fair desperate. Ellis got on the peck, one night, and commenced throwing it into Shooting-star about Lonesome Ann—which is what we called her.