"No! No bettin' at all!"
"Nor have any connection with any duels whatsoever?"
The widow looked puzzled. She didn't understand. What had duels to do with solemn marriage?
"It's all in the statutes, all right!" roared the sheriff angrily, as vast portions of the laws of Nevada fled from his agitated mind.
"Mebbe you're both grand jurors now; I dunno. I think that's the oath. I reckon it's good and bindin', anyhow." He stood up in his buggy and shook the reins furiously over his horses' backs to escape from further legal entanglements. Leaning back over the folded top, he pointed at them magisterially with his whip.
"And now, by the grace of God and me, Jake Bowerman, I hereby pronounce yuh man and wife!"
With a roar of wheels, bad language, and a cloud of dust, the sheriff vanished in pursuit of the California line and the fleet-footed Tommy.
Cassidy pulled his horses into a much-needed walk. The little woman sat down and felt for her bonnet.
"My!" gasped Mrs. Cassidy, "that was going some! Do yuh reckon we're really married?"
The team, unheeded, had swung off from the desert into a road made in damper, richer soil. Not far ahead, now, the dark foliage of the Willow Spring ranch rose in cool relief against the grim, sun-reddened buttes beyond. Their passenger had some time since dropped quietly off and was walking ahead of the plodding horses.