"Laugh! It's awful funny! I never could abide Mis' Mace, either. She's always talkin', talkin'. Talk the hide off a cow, an' not half try. How Jim stands her I can't see nohow. If she was my woman I'd feed her wolf-pizen, or take it myself." "I guess now yuh never was married, was yuh, Scotty?" "Me married! Well, I guess not! Come mighty close to it once. I must 'a' been crazy or drunk, or somethin'--anyway, when I was a young feller over east in Macpherson, Kansas, me an' Sue Shimmers had it all fixed for hitchin' up together. Nice girl, Sue was. Good cook, a heap energetic, an' right pretty in the face. The day before the weddin' Sue cuts stick an' elopes with Tug Wilson, the blacksmith. "I felt bad for mighty nigh a week, but I've been a heap joyous ever since. Yes, sir, Sue developed a lot after marriage. Why, if Tug took so much as one finger of old Jordan Sue'd wallop him with a axe-handle. Poor old Tug used to chew up so many cloves he got dyspepsy. Between the axe-handle an' the dyspepsy Tug had all he could swing to keep alive. I've never stopped bein' grateful to Tug Wilson. He saved my life. Yes, sir, as a rule, females is bad medicine." "How about Mis' Burr an' her daughter?" "I said as a general rule. Like I told yuh once before, Mis' Burr an' Dorothy are real ladies, all silk an' several yards wide. A gent can talk to them just like folks. An' Dorothy can have my ranch an' every cayuse on it, includin' my mules, any time she wants. Nothin's too good for that little girl." "She's shore a winner." "She's all o' that. Now there's a girl that'll make a ace-high wife. She wouldn't use no axe-handle. She'd understand a gent's failin's, she would, an' she'd break him off 'em so nice an' easy he wouldn't know nothin' about it. Yes, sir, the party that gets Dorothy Burr needn't worry none 'bout bein' happy." "I guess now there ain't no party real shore-enough fit to make her a husband." "There ain't. No, sir, yuh can bet there ain't. But she'll marry some no-account tinhorn--them kind always does. Say, why don't you make up to her?" "Well, I would," said Loudon, gravely, "only yuh see it wouldn't be proper. I ain't a no-account tinhorn." "You ain't, but O'Leary is." "It ain't gone as far as that!" "Yuh never can tell how far anythin's gone with a woman. Yuh never can tell nothin' about her till it happens. She's a heap unexpected, a female is. Now I don't say as Dorothy'd marry yuh, Tom. Yuh may not be her kind o' feller at all. But yo're a sight better'n Pete O'Leary." "Thanks," said Loudon, dryly.