was a puppy-dog, or some other little critter that couldn’t take care of itself.  Anyhow, we got worked up about the matter, and talked it over considerable when he was out of hearing.  It come to this:  there was no earthly use in trying to get Aleck to go back and make a play at the girl.  He’d ha’ fell dead at the thought of it.  That left nothing but to bring the girl to Aleck.  You see, we thought if we told the young woman that here was a decent honest man—­hurrying over the rest of the description—­just evaporating for love of her, that she might be persuaded to come out and marry him.  We weren’t going to let our pardner slip away without an effort anyhow.  We couldn’t do no less than try.  Then come the problem of who was the proper party to act as messenger.  The rest of us, without bothering him by taking him into our confidence, decided that Scraggs was the proper man, because, if he didn’t know Women and her Ways, the subject belonged to the lost arts.

“But, man!  Didn’t he r’ar when we told him!

“‘Me go after a woman!’ says he. ‘ME!!!—­Take another drink!’ But we labored with him.  Told about what a horrible time he’d had—­he always liked to hear about it—­and how there wasn’t anybody else fit to handle his discard in the little game of matrimony—­and what was the use of sending a man that would break at the first wire fence?  If we was going to do the thing, we wanted to do it; and so forth and so forth, till we had him saddled and bridled and standing in the corner of the corral as peaceful as a soldier’s monument, for he was the best-hearted old cuss under his crust that ever lived.

“‘All right,’ says he.  ’I’ll do it, and it’s “Get there, Eli!” when I hook dirt.  Poor old Aleck is as good as married, and the Lord have mercy on his soul!  But there’s one thing I wish to state:  I’m running the job, and I run it my own way.  I don’t want any interfering nor no talk afterward—­’s that understood?

“It was.  He was to cut loose.

“‘All right,’ says he.  ‘Poor Aleck!’ So that night E. G. W. Scraggs took his cayuse and made for the railroad station, bound east.

“Aleck had give us full details.  We knew all about his little town and about that house in particular; just how the morning-glories grew over the back porch, looking out on the garden patch, and where the cistern was, which, with his usual good luck, Aleck had managed to fall into, whilst they were putting a new cover on it.  Yessir; we knew that little East Dakota town as well as if we’d been raised there; but we were some shy on details concerning the girl.  I swear I don’t believe Aleck had ever looked her full in the face.  She was medium height, plump, blue eyes, brown hair, and that ended the description,

“We suffered any quantity from impatience before E. G. W. showed up.  You see, there ain’t such a lot that happens to other people occurrin’ on a ranch, and we was really more excited over Aleck and his girl than a tenderfoot would be over a gun fight, and for the same reason; it was out of our ordinary.