"Of course," she answered, sighing happily. "You'll never be bothered with him again." "Never no more," said the sheriff, not knowing what the years would bring. Although it was ten o'clock when they finished their meal, both insisted on setting out for their new home in Hope Canon. "Don't go to-night. You can stay with me," said the Widow Brown. "There's lots of room. Or wait--I'll move out. You'll be more comfortable all alone." "No, thank you, ma'am," answered the sheriff. "I know the trail like I do the path from your front gate. We'll be there in two hours." So they set out through the languorous dark. Lafe drove easily with one hand. CHAPTER XXV JOHNSON BECOMES BOSS OF THE ANVIL The Johnsons went to live at Lafe's place beyond the Willows, in Hope Canon. And there they occupied a frame house on the crest of a knoll. It was an ideal locality for a bridal couple, privacy being its most pronounced feature. For nobody else lived in the Canon and their nearest neighbors were the citizens of Badger, fourteen miles distant, beyond a swelling valley and a fringe of hills. Hetty was so busy making habitable the three bare rooms of the home, that the days were as minutes to her and the weeks took wings. It was absolutely amazing what she achieved with two tables, a packing case, six chairs, a bureau and some mats and window curtains--all these freighted from Badger in a wagon. No room of the three gave the appearance of having been slighted. In lieu of pictures, she contrived to bestow brightness to the walls by tacking up covers from magazines, and solid comfort was afforded by bunks built in corners of two of the rooms. They were draped with Navajo blankets and Hetty had constructed them herself of substantial oak, Lafe being an indifferent carpenter and immensely impatient of it. After the manner of his kind he hated any task that could not be done on horseback. That Hetty had a taste for show cannot be denied, because the bed in her room was hung with mosquito netting in the shape of a canopy, and there was a wondrous blue coverlet. Indeed, it was fit for a royal couch. To a bachelor of long standing, adjustment to married life brings with it certain brain shocks and sudden vistas. It is constantly unfolding surprises that burst on his vision as wonders. So many shifts of their household arrangements struck Lafe as unique that he could not forbear mention of them to his friends in Badger--with the air of a discoverer, confident that nothing like this had ever been done or attempted before in history. Whereupon they would emit merry jeers and the older men would assure him that he would soon be harness-broken.