“It looks like you’d hurry up the nooptials, then, before yuh starve plumb to death,” he growls. “And have yuh got a affidavy that Lonesome Ann can frame up any better meals than what Bud and me can? The chances is she can’t. Some uh the darndest messes I ever insulted my insides with was throwed together by the gentle hands uh woman. Yuh don’t want to go into this thing with your hands tied behind yuh, Shooting-star.” Shooting-star quit shoveling sugar into his coffee. “I ain’t,” he retorts, kinda lofty. “She can make coffee frappy and Charlotte Rush, and floatin’ island and plum pudding and mince pie. I asked her in my first letter. She can make everything in the Christmas menu on the Housekeeper’s Page uh that _Family Cricket Magazine_. I asked her. And in about three weeks you imitation chuck-slingers can git out the kitchen, and let somebody in that can _cook_.” Ellis kinda gulped, but he didn’t say nothing then. Afterwards, we went down to the old bunk-house and started a fire, and talked it over without results. Any way we looked at it we didn’t see no chance to butt in. We both took the same stand—that a woman that had to advertise for a man or go without, must sure be a hard proposition. And we didn’t take no stock in her cooking, neither; that kind of a female would likely lie promiscous when she was after a husband. We shook our heads sorrowful, and wisht we’d held up that first letter. Now things had gone so far we couldn’t do nothing but look on and be sorry. In about two weeks Shooting-star told us to turn loose and clean up the Hall of Mirth. He said it was plumb scandalous the way we’d let the dirt pile up a foot thick on the floor; and he wanted George Washington gone over with a damp cloth—which was quite a contract, considering the size of him—and the cobwebs swept off’n the stars and stripes on the ceiling. He said it was a disgrace the way we’d let that beautiful place go to rack and ruin. And when he come back, he said (he was going to Butte to meet Lonesome Ann, and they was to be hooked up there), he wanted the house good and warm, and we was to have the table all set in the dining-room, and all the folding-doors wide open, so Mrs. Shooting-star could get a good view uh the beauty and richness of her new home at one glance. “And for the Lord’s sake,” he winds up, “don’t throw matches and cigarette-stubs on the floor; try and have some style about yuh. And,” he says, “I want yuh to fix up that dance sign, and light it just before we git here. Ellis can drive in after us, and Bud, yuh sure want to remember that sign, and have it ready; and have all the lamps lit, so these rooms’ll show up good. I want her to see, right off, that there ain’t nothing small about Montana.”