When Cimarron Bill laid before Miss Barndollar the message embodied in that “Injun letter,” she was so swept away by woe that even the hardened messenger was shocked. More and worse: Miss Barndollar, with a lack of logic for which her sex has celebration, laid these new troubles, as she had the old, at the door of Mr. Masterson.
“You druv him from me!” cried Miss Barndollar, as she reproached Mr. Masterson with her loss. “In your heartlessness you druv him from me! An’ now, although Sheriff of this yere county, you fails to restore him to my heart.” Throughout that day and the next Miss Barndollar made it a practice to burst into tears at sight of Mr. Masterson. “Which I wants my Rattlesnake,” she wailed.
Mr. Masterson was turning desperate. This mood found display in an exclamation that was wrung from him while refreshing his weary soul in the Long Branch.
“There’s no use talking, Luke,” observed Mr. Masterson, turning in his despair to Mr. Short, “Dodge can’t stand this! Calamity must and shall be married! If Rattlesnake won’t have her, some other man must.”
In making this last remark Mr. Masterson let his glance fall by chance on Cimarron Bill. That determined person was startled to the core.
“You needn’t look at me!” he roared. “Which I gives notice I’ll never be married alive!”
“No one’s thinking of you, Cimarron.” retorted Mr. Masterson, and the suspicious one breathed more evenly.
Mr. Masterson and Mr. Short consulted in low tones across the counter. At last Mr. Short straightened up as one who is clear, and said:
“Calamity in effect offers herse’f to this Rattlesnake person, an’ he equiv’cates. Thar’s two things in this republic which no white man has a license to decline; one’s the presidency, an’ t’other’s a lady. This Rattlesnake has no rights left.”
“But,” said Mr. Masterson, hesitating over the point, “I don’t quite see my way clear—as Sheriff.”