Me and Hashknife cut cards to see which of us would marry Glory Sillman, accept five hundred dollars in place of a wife and then leave the country. This was to save Jim Sillman from the law of the Crick, and would also allow Glory to go outside and get educated like a human being. Willer Crick had a peculiar law. It seems that they rules that a girl has to stay on the crick until she gets married. After she’s hooked up she can leave. Of course, they means to make her marry one of their own bunch, but their law don’t specify that. It also seems that the sins of one of the family is visited upon all the rest of that family.
Jim Sillman explains that everything he owns is on the crick, and that if Glory breaks the law they’re liable to take away his property as punishment. Kind of a weak way of looking at things, but we can’t all think alike thataway. He offers us five hundred dollars cash if one of us will marry her. This gives her the right to pull her freight out of there and also saves him from their locoed law.
Glory don’t want a regular husband, and it’s a cinch that me and Hashknife ain’t noways hankering for a wife, but it’s a sporting chance and we takes it. We never collected that five hundred for the simple reason that the “uncle,” who was financing the law-breaking scheme, turned out to be the sheriff of Yolo, who had been trailing me and Hashknife for six months.
Sometimes I’m kinda sorry we didn’t smoke up that bunch and take Glory along with us. I spoke to Hashknife about it the day we left there.
“Easy enough,” says he. “I could ’a’ downed her uncle and her pa—easy. Any girl would whoop with joy to see her uncle and paw full of lead. Maybe she’d ’a’ married you, Sleepy, dang your homely face. Maybe she’d ’a’ married me—me bein’ handsome; but any old way yuh take it, we’d ’a’ busted up—me and you. Yuh can’t keep a wife and a bunkie.”
“Hashknife,” says I, “would yuh rather have me than a wife?”
“You danged porkypine, I don’t have to support you.”
It’s been quite a while since me and Hashknife hit for the open trails. We stayed at the Circle Dot a lot longer than we ever stayed any one place before, but when the snow fades off the hills and the grass shows green on the slopes and you can smell the sunshine—we’re traveling.
“Where?” I asks.
“Anywhere,” says Hashknife, jingling three months’ pay. “We’re follerin’ our noses, cowboy. Maybe we’ll get to Alaska this time.”