“Boss!” Gus interrupted, “you needn’t be sorry for nothin’. It was all my fault—the whole blame thing. But, boss, see what it got me—ain’t she a beauty?” And he looked at his wife proudly.
“She sure is, Gus! Now let’s get this thing straight. Nick Looker—where is that bowlegged wild man? Where’d you find Gus, Nick?”
“He wandered back two days after Teddy an’ Roy left,” Nick chuckled. “He’d been all the way to Togas, Mexico, an’ got married—You tell it, Gus!”
“Well, boss, it was this way,” Gus began, as he gripped an arm of Teddy and Roy affectionately. “You know I was worried about not gettin’ no letters from the lady here—I mean my wife,” and he blushed. “You know, Teddy—I told you about it. Gee, ain’t it funny to have a wife? Well, she didn’t write for a long time, so I got worried, an’ started to—do some things I shouldn’t. I thought she’d threw me down.”
“But, Gus, I did write, every day!” his wife interrupted.
“Sure she did!” Nick burst out. “Gus, that dumb postmaster down at Eagles mislaid the letters! I got ’em now in my bunk—a whole raft of ’em!”
“You have? Well, I’m a ring-tailed doodle bird!” Gus said slowly, and sat down. “An’ I went an’ got sick, almost, with worry, an’ let the cattle stray ’cause I went to town an’ got drunk, an’ all this happened because the postmaster lost my letters! Can—you—beat—that?”
“Golly, Teddy, he’s right!” Roy exclaimed. “Snakes, it’s just like a story! We went up Whirlpool River—got tipped over—found The Pup—had the fight with the rustlers—everything—all on account of some missing letters! Golly, that’s funny! If Gus had gotten those letters he never would have neglected the cattle, would you, Gus?”
“Nope, not me! I hardly knew what I was doin’, I was so worried. I thought you was dead, or somethin’,” and he felt bashfully for his wife’s hand. When he caught it, after not much trouble, he went on:
“An’ that’s the way it was. So I heads fer Togas, after the boss lets me out, an’ goes straight fer the little girl here. So we gets hitched an’ come home!”