N. B.—Kate and me agrees that the next chapter has to be cut out, being dull. It's all about the barn-raising after we got home to the ranch. The neighbors put us up a fine big cabin connecting to the old one by a covered porch of cedar shakes. That's where the fire-wood lives, the water-butt, the grind-stone, which Kate says is exactly like my singing voice, likewise the ax and saw.
Of course our house-raising was a celebration, with a dance, camp-fire, water-butt full of punch, and headaches. I bet five dollars I was the only semaphore signaler in our district, and lost it to Iron Dale, who learned signaling five years ago during the Riel rebellion. Cap Taylor put up a signal system for our use, of fires by night or big smokes by day. One means a celebration, two means help, and three means war. The women beat the men at tug-of-war, but that was due to the widow's wooden leg being a rallying point for the battle. Eph being holed up for the winter, I got more popular.
After the celebration we settled for the winter, and I put all the ponies except Jones and the sleigh team down in the cañon pasture. That made the ranch sort of lonesome, but we're short of hay on account of the wedding-trip. We're broke.
CHAPTER V
THE ILLUSTRIOUS SALVATOR
Jesse's Letter
Mother, I'm married. I thought I'd got bliss by the horns, but seems I've not roped what I throwed for, and what I've caught is trouble. I wish you weren't in Heaven, which feels kind of cold and distant when a fellow's lonesome. Nobody loves me, and the mosquitoes has mistook me for a greenhorn.
I can't smoke in the lady's home, and when it's forty below zero outside, a pipe clogs with ice from your breath. Chewing is worse, because she cried. She don't need my guns, saddles, and me, or any sort of litter whar she beds down, and my table manners belongs under the table. Men, she says, feeds sitting down, so they won't be mistook for animals, which stand up.
Loyal Englishmen like the late Trevor now frying, has a cold bath every morning, specially in winter, which throws a surprising light upon his last symptoms. It's that frozen manner and pyjamas, which makes the Englishman so durned popular. If I belonged to the episcopal sect, wearing a coat in the house instead of out-of-doors, and used pink tooth-paste instead of yellow soap, maybe I'd like my hash with curry powder, and have some hope of going, when I die, to parts of Heaven where the English keeps open windows, instead of open house. Meanwhile I jest moved back into the old cabin with Mick,—he's wagging himself by the tail between my legs to say as this writing habit is a vice. If I'd only a bottle of whisky now I'd be good, but as it's eighty miles to refreshments, he's got to put up with vice.