CHAPTER FIVE
THINGS GIT STARTED WRONG
Up to the day of the sheriff’s weddin’, I reckon I was about the happiest feller that’s ever been in these parts. Gee! but I was in high spirits! It’d be Macie’s and my turn next, I figgered, and if the ole man didn’t like it, he could just natu’lly lump it. So when I walked through Briggs, why, I hit both sides of the street, exac’ly as if I was three sheets in the wind.
But–this was one time when you’ friend Cupid was just a little bit too previous. And I want to say right here that no feller needs to think he’s the hull shootin’-match with a gal, and has the right-a-way, like a wild-cat ingine on a’ open track, just ’cause she’s ast him to write in her autograph-album. It don’t mean such a blamed lot, neither, if his picture is stuck ’longside of hern on top of the organ. Them signs is encouragin’, a-course; but he’d best take his coat off and git to work. Even when she’s give all the others the G. B., and has gone to church with him about forty Sunday evenin’s, hand runnin’, and has allus saved him the grand march and the last waltz at the Fireman’s Ball, and mebbe six ’r seven others bysides, why, even then it’s a toss-up. Yas, ma’am. It took hard knocks t’ learn me that they’s nothin’ dead certain short of the parson’s “amen.”
Y’ see, you can plug a’ Injun, and kick a dawg, and take a club to a mule; but when it’s a gal, and a feller thinks a turrible lot of her, and she’s so all-fired skittish he cain’t manage her, and so eludin’ he cain’t find her no two times in the same place, what’s he goin’ to do? Wal, they ain’t no reg’lar way of proceedin’–ev’ry man has got to blaze his own trail.
But I couldn’t, and that was the hull trouble. I know now that when it come to dealin’ with Mace, I shore was a darned softy. That little Muggins could twist me right ’round her finger–and me not know it! One minute, she’d pallaver me fer further orders, whilst I’d look into them sweet eyes of hern till I was plumb dizzy; the next, she’d be cuttin’ up some dido ’r other and leadin’ me a’ awful chase.
Then, mebbe, I’d git sore at her, and think mighty serious about shakin’ the Bar Y dust offen my boots fer good. “Cupid,” I’d say to myself, “git you’ duds t’gether, and do you’ blankets up in you’ poncho.”
Just about then, here she come lopin’ home from town, her hoss cuttin’ up like Sam Hill, and her a-settin’ so straight and cute. She’d look towards the bunk-house, see me, motion me over with her quirt, and–wal, a-course, I’d go.
I made my first big beefsteak at the very beginnin’. Somehow ’r other, right from the minute we had our confidential talk t’gether back of Silverstein’s, that last night of the Medicine Show. I got it into my fool haid that I as good as had her, and that all they was left to be did was t’ git ’round the ole man. Wal, this idear worked fine as long as we was so busy with Bergin’s courtin’. But when the sheriff was hitched, and me and the little gal got a recess, my! my! but a heap of things begun t’ happen!
They started off like this: The parson wanted money fer t’ buy some hymn-books with. So he planned a’ ice-cream social and entertainment, and ast Mace to go down on the program fer a song. She was willin’; I was, too. So far, ev’ry-thin’ smooth as glare-ice.