Some two weeks before Easter Sunday, Cotton returned from the Frio, where he had been making a call on his intended.  Uncle Lance at once questioned him to know if they had set the day, and was informed that the marriage would occur within ten days after Lent, and that he expected first to make a hurried trip to San Antonio for a wedding outfit.

“That’s all right, John,” said the old ranchero approvingly, “and I expect Quirk might as well go with you.  You can both draw every cent due you, and take your time, as wages will go right on the same as if you were working.  There will not be much to do except the usual horse breaking and a little repairing about the ranch.  It’s quite likely I shan’t be able to spare Tom in the early summer, for if no cattle buyers come along soon, I’m going to send June to the coast and let him sniff around for one.  I’d like the best in the world to sell about three thousand beeves, and we never had fatter ones than we have to-day.  If we can make a sale, it’ll keep us busy all the fore part of the summer.  So both you fellows knock off any day you want to and go up to the city.  And go horseback, for this ranch don’t give Bethel & Oxenford’s stages any more of its money.”

With this encouragement, we decided to start for the city the next morning.  But that evening I concluded to give a certain roan gelding a final ride before turning him over to the vaqueros.  He was a vicious rascal, and after trying a hundred manoeuvres to unhorse me, reared and fell backward, and before I could free my foot from the stirrup, caught my left ankle, fracturing several of the small bones in the joint.  That settled my going anywhere on horseback for a month, as the next morning I could not touch my foot to the ground.  John did not like to go alone, and the mistress insisted that Theodore was well entitled to a vacation.  The master consented, each was paid the wages due him, and catching up their own private horses, the old cronies started off to San Antonio.  They expected to make Mr. Booth’s ranch in a little over half a day, and from there a sixty-mile ride would put them in the city.

After the departure of the boys the dull routine of ranch work went heavily forward.  The horse breaking continued, vaqueros rode the range looking after the calf crop, while I had to content myself with nursing a crippled foot and hobbling about on crutches.  Had I been able to ride a horse, it is quite possible that a ranch on the San Miguel would have had me as its guest; but I must needs content myself with lying around the house, visiting with Juana, or watching the carpenter finishing the cottages.  I tried several times to interest my mistress in a scheme to invite my sweetheart over for a week or two, but she put me off on one pretext and another until I was vexed at her lack of enthusiasm.  But truth compels me to do that good woman justice, and I am now satisfied that my vexation was due to my own peevishness over my condition and not to neglect on her part.  And just then she was taking such an absorbing interest in June and the widow, and likewise so sisterly a concern for Dan Happersett, that it was little wonder she could give me no special attention when I was soon to be married.  It was the bird in the bush that charmed Miss Jean.