“The next spring I got a chance to boss a herd up the trail for Jesse Ellison.  It was the chance of my life and I couldn’t think of refusing.  The girl put up quite a mouth about it, and I explained to her that a hundred a month wasn’t offered to every man.  She finally gave in, but still you could see she wasn’t pleased.  Girls that way don’t sabe cattle matters a little bit.  She promised to write me at several points which I told her the herd would pass.  When I bade her good-by, tears stood in her eyes, though she tried to hide them.  I’d have gambled my life on her that morning.

“Well, we had a nice trip, good outfit and strong cattle.  Uncle Jess mounted us ten horses to the man, every one fourteen hands or better, for we were contracted for delivery in Nebraska.  It was a five months’ drive with scarcely an incident on the way.  Just a run or two and a dry drive or so.  I had lots of time to think about Kate.  When we reached the Chisholm crossing on Red River, I felt certain that I would find a letter, but I didn’t.  I wrote her from there, but when we reached Caldwell, nary a letter either.  The same luck at Abilene.  Try as I might, I couldn’t make it out.  Something was wrong, but what it was, was anybody’s guess.

“At this last place we got our orders to deliver the cattle at the junction of the middle and lower Loup.  It was a terror of a long drive, but that wasn’t a circumstance compared to not hearing from Kate.  I kept all this to myself, mind you.  When our herd reached its destination, which it did on time, as hard luck would have it there was a hitch in the payment.  The herd was turned loose and all the outfit but myself sent home.  I stayed there two months longer at a little place called Broken Bow.  I held the bill of sale for the herd, and would turn it over, transferring the cattle from one owner to another, on the word from my employer.  At last I received a letter from Uncle Jesse saying that the payment in full had been made, so I surrendered the final document and came home.  Those trains seemed to run awful slow.  But I got home all too soon, for she had then been married three months.

“You see an agent for eight-day clocks came along, and being a stranger took her eye.  He was one of those nice, dapper fellows, wore a red necktie, and could talk all day to a woman.  He worked by the rule of three,—­tickle, talk, and flatter, with a few cutes thrown in for a pelon; that gets nearly any of them.  They live in town now.  He’s a windmill agent.  I never went near them.”

Meanwhile the fire kept pace with the talk, thanks to Uncle Lance’s watchful eye.  “That’s right, Tiburcio, carry up plenty of good lena,” he kept saying.  “Bring in all the black-jack oak that you can find; it makes fine coals.  These are both big gobblers, and to bake them until they fall to pieces like a watermelon will require a steady fire till morning.  Pile up a lot of wood, and if I wake up during the night, trust to me to look after the fire.  I’ve baked so many turkeys this way that I’m an expert at the business.”