“You and Cimarron!” cried Mr. Masterson indignantly.
From over a knoll a clatter was heard, and Cimarron Bill came rattling into camp with the buckboard. This may or may not have had to do with Mr. Masterson’s failure to finish his last remark. Possibly that adage, which tells of how soon things mend when least is said, occurred to him as a reason for holding his peace.
The perforated Rattlesnake was comfortably mowed away in a Wright House bed, his beloved Calamity bending over him. When the first joy of their meeting had been given time to wear itself away, the lady was called into the hall by Mr. Masterson. Mr. Short was with him.
“I don’t want to be understood, Calamity,” said Mr. Masterson, “as trying to crowd your hand, but the preacher will be here at 7 P. M., at which hour you and Rattlesnake are to become man and wife. That bullet is, I confess, an unusual feature in a honeymoon; but for all that the wedding must take place, per schedule, as I’ve got to get this thing off my mind.”
“As for that bullet in Rattlesnake,” added Mr. Short, “it’s a distinct advantage. It’ll make him softer an’ more sentimental. Which a gent gets sentimental in direct proportion as you shoot him up. I’ve known two bullets, properly planted, to set a party to writin’ poetry.”
“Do I onderstand, Bat,” asked Mr. Kelly, as following the wedding they were wending to the Alhambra with a plan to drink good fortune to the happy pair; “do I onderstand that you used my name in gunnin’ for this bridegroom?”
“That Calamity girl had me locoed,” explained Mr. Masterson apologetically. “I’d been harassed to a degree, Kell, that left me knockin’ ’round in the situation like a blind dog in a meat shop, hardly knowing right from wrong. All I wanted was to marry him to Calamity, and I seized on your name to land the trick.”
“Still,” objected Mr. Kelly, mildly, “you ought not to have founded the play on his wingin’ me. While I won’t say that his shootin’ me was in the best of taste that time, after all it wasn’t more’n a breach of manners, an’ not in any of its aspects, as I onderstand, a voylation of the law. It wasn’t fair to me to make him marry that Calamity lady for that.”
“Besides,” urged Cimarron Bill, who had come up, “them nuptials is onconstitootional, bein’ in deefiance of the clause which declar’s that no onusual or crooel punishments shall be meted out. Which I knows it’s thar, because Bob Wright showed it to me at the time I urged stoppin’ old Bobby Gill’s licker for a week to punish him for pesterin’ ’round among us mourners the day of Bridget’s fooneral.”