"Don't be a derned fool, Jack," blurted Slim; "can't you see she ain't never loved no one else?"
"Echo, is it so?" asked Jack eagerly.
Slim grinned. Going over to Echo's side, he gave her a slight push, saying: "Go tell him."
"Jack!" was her only cry, as her husband enfolded her in his arms.
With the next election for sheriff in Pinal County, William Henry Harrison Hoover had no opposition, for Buck McKee's nomination for that office of one Peruna, formerly of the Lazy K outfit, was not ratified for several reasons, the chief of which was that W. H. H. Hoover, alias Slim, had, just previous to election, officially declared that the said Peruna was deceased, having come to his death in the jail-yard of Pinal County, by a sudden drop at the end of a new hempen rope, which did not break, as Slim, before the ceremony, had assured the apprehensive Peruna it would not.
The sudden and successive removals of its two most honored and influential members, Buck McKee and Peruna, greatly demoralized the Lazy K outfit, and the demoralization was completed by the pernicious activity of the reelected Sheriff in interfering with the main purpose of that industrial organization, which was the merger of the Sweetwater cattle-business through a gradual amalgamation of all brands into the Lazy K. One by one the captains or cavaliers of this industry sought more congenial regions, where public inquisition into such purely private concerns as theirs was not so vigorously prosecuted.
It must not be thought that the social graces and persuasive abilities of Sheriff Hoover were confined to the conduct of legalized necktie-parties and the dispersion of outlaws. In its extended account of the "Lane-Hope Nuptials," the Florence Kicker devoted much of the space to the part taken by the "best man" in the ceremony, "our genial and expansive boniface of the new county apartment hotel." And soon after it recorded that the same Sheriff Hoover had induced the "charming Miss Wiggins, sister of our deputy sheriff, to be his partner for life, as she had been for the dance at the Lane-Hope nuptials, described in our issue of June 15," and that "the happy couple receive their friends—which we are instructed our readers is an 'invite' to the entire county—at their future home, the new county jail, on the Fourth of July."
And in a "local" paragraph of the issue containing the latter notice, the editor of the Kicker remarks:
"Remember the Sheriff's Round-up on the Fourth. As ( ), our friend from the Sweetwater with the 'all round understanding,' says: '[right curly brace symbol, i.e. "brace">[ up, Slim; all the boys will be there to [right-pointing finger] you a few; you'll sure see * * * [Updater's note: stars].'"