“How would it be to invite Kif's wife to come yere on a visit?” queries Tutt. “Sorter take her on probation! That's the way an oncle of mine back in Missouri j'ines the Meth'dist Church. An' it's lucky the congregation takes them precautions; which they saves the trouble of cuttin' the old felon out of the herd later, when he falls from grace. Which last he shorely does!”
“Not waitin' for the chair to answer,” replies Doc Peets, “I holds the limitation of Tutt to be good. I tharfore pinches down my original resolootion to the effect that Kif bring his wife yere for a month. Let her stack up ag'inst our daily game, an' triumph through a deal or so, an' she'll never quit Wolfville nor Wolfville her. I shorely holds the present occasion the openin' of a new era.”
It is a month later, perhaps, when everybody assembles at the post-office to receive the lady on whom the local public has built so many hopes. Killifer has gone over to Tucson to act as her escort into Wolfville, and, as he said, “to sorter break the effect.”
She is an iron-visaged heroine. As Killifer hands her from the stage—a ceremony upon which he bestows that delicate care wherewith he would have aided the unloading of so much dynamite—Doc Peets steps gallantly forward, raising his hat. Doc Peets is the proprietor of the only stiff hat in town, and presumes on it.
“Who is that insultin' drunkard, Mr. Killifer?” demands the lady, as she bends her eyes on the suave Peets, with such point-blank wrath that it silences the salutation on Peets' lips; “no friend of your'n I hope?”
“Which I says it in confidence,” remarks Old Monte, as an hour later he refreshes himself at the bar of the Red Light, “for I holds it onprofessional to go blowin' the private affairs of my passengers, but I shorely thinks the old grizzly gives Kif a clawin' on the way over. I hears him yell like a wolf back in Long's canyon. To be shore! he's inside an' I can't see, but I'm offerin' two to one up to $100 she was lickin' him; if I don't I'm a Siwash!”
It turns out as Killifer predicted. He read the lady aright. There is nothing in Wolfville to which she yields approval. It would be as impossible as it would be terrific, to repeat in print the conduct of this remarkable woman. She utterly abashes Enright; while such hare-hearts as Jack Moore, Cherokee Hall, Dave Tutt, Texas Thompson, Short Creek Dave and Dan Boggs, fly from her like quicksilver. Even Doc Peets acknowledges himself defeated and put to naught. The least of her feats is the invasion of a peaceful poker game to which Killifer is party, and the sweeping confiscation of every dollar in the bank on claim that it is money ravished from Killifer by venal practices. The mildest of her plans is one to assail the Red Light with an axe, should she ever detect the odour of whiskey about Killifer again.