The bride was arrayed in her wedding-gown. Mrs. Allen was ready for a fresh burst of weeping. The girls had assembled in the large room in which the ceremony was to be performed. Polly acted as her herald for the cowboys. Appearing in the doorway, she commanded: "Say, you folks come on and get seated."
Slim stood beside Polly as the boys marched past him. His general admonition was: "The first one you shorthorns that makes a break, I'm goin' to bend a gun over your head."
The guests grinned cheerfully as they marched past the couple.
"There's a heap of wickedness in that bunch," remarked Slim piously to the girl. Tossing a flower to him as she darted away, she cried: "You ain't none too good yourself, Slim."
"Ain't she a likely filly," mused the love-sick Sheriff. "If there's anybody that could make me good, it's her. I'm all in. If ever I get the nerve all at once—darn me if I don't ask her right out."
But Slim's courage oozed as quickly as it had arisen, and with a sigh he followed his companions to the wedding.
CHAPTER IX
What God Hath Joined Together
Dick Lane, on leaving the hospital at Chihuahua, went straight to the fortified ledge where he had made his heroic defense. As he conjectured, the renegade, McKee, had got there first, and found and made off with the buried treasure. So Dick manfully set to work to replace his lost fortune. It seemed too slow work to go to his mine and dig the gold he immediately required out of the ground, so he struck out for civilization to sell some of his smaller claims. In the course of a month, at the end of which his wanderings brought him to Tucson, he had sold enough of his holdings to give him three thousand dollars in ready cash. As he was near the Sweetwater, he resolved not to express the money to Payson, but to take it himself.