“My wending is all over for the present,” said Ford, wheeling his horse short around, that he might ride alongside the other.  “I started out to hunt you up, you old devil.  How are you, anyway?”

“It is well with me, and well with my soul—­what little I’ve got—­but it ain’t so well with my winter grub-stake.  I’m just as tickled to see you as you ever dare be to meet up with me, and that’s no lie.  I heard you’ve got a stand-in with the Double Cross, and seeing they ain’t on to my little peculiarities, I thought I’d ride out and see if I couldn’t work you for a soft snap.  Got any ducks out there you want led to water?”

“Maybe—­I dunno.  I just canned two men this morning, before I left.”  Ford was debating with himself how best to approach the subject to him most important.

“Good ee-nough!  I can take the place of those two men; eat their share of grub, do their share of snoring, and shirk their share of work, and drink their share of booze—­oh, lovely!  But, in the words of the dead, immortal Shakespeare, ‘What’s eating you?’ You look to me as if you hadn’t enjoyed the delights of a good, stiff jag since—­” He waved a hand vaguely.  “Ain’t a scar on you, so help me!” He regarded Ford with frank curiosity.

“Oh, yes there is.  I’ve got the hide peeled off two knuckles, and one of my thumbs is just getting so it will move without being greased,” Ford assured him, and then went straight at what was on his mind.

“Say, Rock, I was told that you had a hand in my getting married, back in Sunset that night.”

Rock made his horse back until it nearly fell over a rock; his face showed exaggerated symptoms of terror.

“I couldn’t help it,” he wailed.  “Spare muh—­for muh poor mother’s sake, oh spare muh life!” Whereat Ford laughed, just as Rock meant that he should do.  “You licked Bill twice for that, they tell me,” Rock went on, quitting his foolery and coming up close again.  “And you licked the preacher that night, and—­so the tale runneth—­like to have put the whole town on the jinks.  Is there anything in particular you’d like to do to me?”

“I just want you to tell me who I married—­if you can.”  Ford reddened as the other stared, but he did not stop.  “I was so darned full that night I let the whole business ooze out of my memory, and I haven’t been able to—­”

Rock was leaning over the saddle horn, howling and watery-eyed.  Ford looked at him with a dawning suspicion.

“It did strike me, once or twice,” he said grimly, “that the whole thing was a put-up job.  If you fellows rigged up a josh like that, and let it go as far as this, may the Lord have mercy on your souls, for I won’t!”

But Rock could only wave him off weakly; so Ford waited until he had recovered.  Even then, it took some talking to convince Rock that the affair was truly serious and not to be treated any longer as a joke.

“Why, damn it, man, I’m in love with a girl and I want to marry her if I can get rid of this other darned, mysterious, Tom-fool of a woman,” Ford gritted at last, in sheer desperation.  “Or if it’s just a josh, by this and by that I mean to find it out.”