“This affection of Tom’s is partic’lar amazin’ when you-all recalls the fashion in which the sullen Jerry receives it.  Doorin’ the several years I spends in their s’ciety I never once detects Jerry in any look or word of kindness to Tom.  Jerry bites him an’ kicks him an’ cusses him out constant; he never tol’rates Tom closter than twenty foot onless at times when he orders Tom to curry him.  Shore, the imbecile Tom submits.  On sech o’casions when Jerry issues a summons to go over him, usin’ his upper teeth for a comb an’ bresh, Tom is never so happy.  Which he digs an’ delves at Jerry’s ribs that a-way like it’s a honour; after a half hour, mebby, when Jerry feels refreshed s’fficient, he w’irls on Tom an’ dismisses him with both heels.

“‘I track up on folks who’s jest the same,’ says Dan Boggs, one time when I mentions this onaccountable infatyooation of Tom.  ’This Jerry loves that Tom mule mate of his, only he ain’t lettin’ on.  I knows a lady whose treatment of her husband is a dooplicate of Jerry’s.  She metes out the worst of it to that long-sufferin’ shorthorn at every bend in the trail; it looks like he never wins a good word or a soft look from her once.  An’ yet when that party cashes in, whatever does the lady do?  Takes a hooker of whiskey, puts in p’isen enough to down a dozen wolves, an’ drinks off every drop.  ‘Far’well, vain world, I’m goin’ home,’ says the lady; ‘which I prefers death to sep’ration, an’ I’m out to jine my beloved husband in the promised land.’  I knows, for I attends the fooneral of that family—­said fooneral is a double-header as the lady, bein’ prompt, trails out after her husband before ever he’s pitched his first camp—­an’ later assists old Chandler in deevisin’ a epitaph, the same occurrin’ in these yere familiar words: 

  “She sort o got the drop on him,
    In the dooel of earthly love;
  Let’s hope he gets an even break
    When they meets in heaven above.”

“‘Thar,’ concloods Dan, ’is what I regyards as a parallel experience to this Tom an’ Jerry.  The lady plays Jerry’s system from soda to hock, an’ yet you-all can see in the lights of that thar sooicide how deep she loves him.’

“‘That’s all humbug, Dan,’ says Enright; ’the lady you relates of isn’t lovin’.  She’s only locoed that a-way.’

“‘Whyever if she’s locoed, then,’ argues Dan, ‘don’t they up an’ hive her in one of their madhouse camps?  She goes chargin’ about as free an’ fearless as a cyclone.’

“‘All the same,’ says Texas Thompson, ‘her cashin’ in don’t prove no lovin’ heart.  Mebby she does it so’s to chase him up an’ continyoo onbroken them hectorin’s of her’s.  I could onfold a fact or two about that wife of mine who cuts out the divorce from me in Laredo that would lead you to concloosions sim’lar.  But she wasn’t your wife; an’ I don’t aim to impose my domestic afflictions on this innocent camp, which bein’ troo I mootely stands my hand.’