Honest, I come blame near telling him to ditch it, and say nothing. But when yuh come to think uh the way they come down on yuh with both feet if yuh go monkeying with the mails, even the good of the Old Man wouldn’t hardly be worth playing the game out. So I told Ellis he better give up the letter, and not butt into no romance—if romance it was to be. Ellis took the letter in and handed it over to Shooting-star, and Shooting-star kinda breathed long and easy, and turned it over and over in his hands, like it assayed pure gold.
I nudged Ellis, and we went out into the kitchen and shut the door.
“So help me, Ellis!” I says, “if she does him up, or plays crooked, or ain’t straight goods, you watch me be righteous vengeance. He’s going to take the whole blame business serious.”
Ellis didn’t hardly agree. He said we could keep cases, and if the game didn’t look all straight, why, we could buy in and coax Shooting-star out. He said we had slathers of influence, if we was a mind to use it right. So we kinda laid low and kept our eyes peeled.
That night Shooting-star commenced to knock the cooking—without cause, too. It was my week in the kitchen, and I don’t back down from no man on boiling coffee or making sour-dough biscuits. Besides them, I had beefsteak you could cut with a paper knife, it was that tender; and stewed prunes with the pits all oozing out; and fresh syrup made by burning a little white sugar in the pan first for flavor, and beans. And if that ain’t good enough for any white man to fill up on, I’ll hand over the dish towel and resign prompt and willing. All that evening Shooting-star set out in the kitchen and wrote. It sure be hard labor, because in the morning the stove was half-full uh burnt paper—where he’d backed up for a fresh start, I took it. Once in awhile he’d holler in to Ellis and me for our idea of the spelling of a word; and by keeping tab on them same words, we got an idea uh what the letter was like. I know we spelled “heartfelt” and “barren,” “generous” and “constant” and “prayer.” Ellis and me studied for an hour over how he figured on ringing in that last word; but Ellis has sure got a swell imagination, and when he thought about, “May the angels watch over you is my prayer,” we savvied right off that we were on the right trail. Say, I’d give a lot to uh seen that letter; I bet she was sure hot stuff.
Shooting-star rode in and mailed it himself, which sure looked to us like he lacked confidence in Ellis and me. Then he dubbed around in a daze till he got the answer, which wasn’t long getting here, either. They sure seemed to go after that corresponding business enthusiastic, and as if they meant business. This here letter had her picture in it, and Ellis and me like to perjured our souls and twisted our necks plumb off trying to get a look at it. But Shooting-star wouldn’t let us see anything but the back; and he packed it around in his inside coat pocket between times, and we never could catch him with his coat off. It was plumb aggravating.
Along about then he got extreme fastididus over what he eat, and bellyached over the cooking till Ellis and me was fair desperate. Ellis got on the peck, one night, and commenced throwing it into Shooting-star about Lonesome Ann—which is what we called her.
“It looks like you’d hurry up the nooptials, then, before yuh starve plumb to death,” he growls. “And have yuh got a affidavy that Lonesome Ann can frame up any better meals than what Bud and me can? The chances is she can’t. Some uh the darndest messes I ever insulted my insides with was throwed together by the gentle hands uh woman. Yuh don’t want to go into this thing with your hands tied behind yuh, Shooting-star.”
Shooting-star quit shoveling sugar into his coffee. “I ain’t,” he retorts, kinda lofty. “She can make coffee frappy and Charlotte Rush, and floatin’ island and plum pudding and mince pie. I asked her in my first letter. She can make everything in the Christmas menu on the Housekeeper’s Page uh that Family Cricket Magazine. I asked her. And in about three weeks you imitation chuck-slingers can git out the kitchen, and let somebody in that can cook.”
Ellis kinda gulped, but he didn’t say nothing then. Afterwards, we went down to the old bunk-house and started a fire, and talked it over without results. Any way we looked at it we didn’t see no chance to butt in. We both took the same stand—that a woman that had to advertise for a man or go without, must sure be a hard proposition. And we didn’t take no stock in her cooking, neither; that kind of a female would likely lie promiscous when she was after a husband. We shook our heads sorrowful, and wisht we’d held up that first letter. Now things had gone so far we couldn’t do nothing but look on and be sorry.