“Who could be writin’ to me?”
Porcupine looked surprised.
“Didn’t you expect nothin’?” Belle Dashiel’s eyes shone mischievously.
“Yass, I tank, mebby.” A deeper red spread over the Swede’s sunburned face.
He opened his letter and spelled it out laboriously, his chest heaving with the effort.
“A man over in Chicago he tank I’m in turrible need of a pianny,” he said in disgust, as he put the circular in the stove.
Porcupine lingered till the chill of the night air crept into the sunshine of the September day. Then he put spurs to his patient cayuse and hit the trail which led into the fastnesses of the Rockies.
The light was not quite gone when he happened to think of the paper he had thrust in his coat-pocket. There might be news in it! Bacon-Rind-Dick had told Two-Dog-Jack that there was a war over in Jay-pan. Porcupine removed the wrapper and the words Wedding Chimes stared him in the face.
As he read, he laid the reins on his horse’s neck and let the pinto pick his own road. The matrimonial sheet opened up a vista of romantic adventures and possibilities of which the Swede had never dreamed. His imagination, which naturally was not a winged thing, was fired until he saw himself leading to his shack up the North Fork of the Belly River the fairest and richest lady in the land. All he had to do was to send five dollars to Wedding Chimes and thus join their matrimonial club. Upon the receipt of the five dollars, the editor would send him the names and addresses of several ladies who were all young, beautiful, wealthy and anxious to be married. He could open a correspondence with one or all of them, and then choose for his bride the lady whose letter appealed to him most.
Porcupine strained his eyes reading descriptions of lily-white blondes and dashing brunettes. When he could see no longer, he folded the precious paper and buttoned it inside his coat.