“Blamed if I remember exactly,” replied Curly, scratching his head, “but they’re shore good folks.  Old man’s sort o’ pious, I reckon.  Anyhow, that’s what Tom Osby says.  He driv along from Hocradle canon with ’em on the road from Vegas.  Said the old man helt services every mornin’ before breakfast.  More services’n breakfast sometimes.  Tom, he says old Whiskers—­that’s our next postmaster—­he sings a-plenty, lifts up his voice exceeding.  Say,” said Curly, turning on me again fiercely, “that’s one reason I’d marry the girl if for nothing else.  It takes more’n a bass voice and a copy of the Holy Scriptures to make a Merry Christmas.  Why, man, say, when I think of what a time we all are going to have,—­you, and me, and Mac, and Tom Osby, and Dan Anderson, with all them things of our’n, and all these here things on the side—­champagne and all that,—­it looks like this world ain’t run on the square, don’t it?”

I assured Curly that this had long been one of my own conclusions.  Assuredly I had not the bad manners to thank him for his invitation to join him in this banquet at Heart’s Desire, knowing as I did Curly’s acquaintance with the fact that young attorneys had not always abundance during their first year in a quasi-mining camp that was two-thirds cow town; such being among the possibilities of that land.  I returned to the cake.

“Where’d we git it?” said Curly.  “Why, where’d you s’pose we got it?  Do you think Dan Anderson has took to pastry along with the statoots made and pervided?  As for Dan, he ain’t been here so very long, but he’s come to stay.  We’re goin’ to send him to Congress if we ever get time to organize our town, or find out what county we’re in.  How’d our Delergate look spreadin’ jelly cake?  Nope, he didn’t make it.  And does it look any like Mac has studied bakery doin’s out on the Carrizoso ranch?  You know Tom Osby couldn’t.  As for me, if hard luck has ever driv me to cookin’ in the past, I ain’t referrin’ to it now.  I’m a straight-up cow puncher and nothin’ else.  That cake?  Why, it come from the Kansas outfit.

“Don’t know which one of ’em done it, but it’s a honey,” he went on.  “Say, she’s a foot high, with white stuff a inch high all over.  She’s soft around the aidge some, for I stuck my finger intoe it just a little.  We just got it recent and we’re night-herdin’ it where it’s cool.  Cost a even ten dollars.  The old lady said she’d make the price all right, but Mac and me, we sort of sized up things and allowed we’d drop about a ten in their recep_ti_cle when we come to pay for that cake.  This family, you see, moved intoe the cabin Hank Fogarty and Jim Bond left when they went away,—­it’s right acrost the ’royo from Dan Anderson’s office, where we’re goin’ to eat to-morrer.

“Now, how that woman could make a cake like this here in one of them narrer, upside-down Mexican ovens—­no stove at all—­no nothing—­say, that’s some like adoptin’ yourself to circumstances, ain’t it?  Why, man, I’d marry intoe that fam’ly if I didn’t do nothing else long as I lived.  They ain’t no Mexican money wrong side of the river.  No counterfeit there regardin’ a happy home—­cuttin’ out the bass voice and givin’ ’em a leetle better line of grass and water, eh?  Well, I reckon not.  Watch me fly to it.”