“Jim was wild as a coyote ’fore he marries that girl.  She come all the way from Topeka, Kansas, thinking she was goin’ to find a respectable home, and when she come out hyear and found the place was a dance-hall, she cried all the time.  She didn’t add none to the hilarity of the place.  An’ one day Jim he strolled in, an’ seem’ the girl a-cryin’ like a freshet and wishin’ she was dead, he inquired the cause.  She told him how that old harpy wrote her, an’, bein’ an orphant, she come out thinkin’ she was goin’ to a respectable place as waitress, an’ Jim he ’lowed it was a case for the law.  He was a little shy of twenty at the time, just a young cockerel ‘bout br’ilin’ size.  Some of the old hangers-on ’bout the place they see a heap of fun in Jim’s takin’ on ‘bout the girl, he bein’ that young that he had scarce growed a pair of spurs yet.  An’ one of ’em says to him,’ Sonny, if you’re afeerd that this yere corral is onjurious to the young lady’s morals, we’ll call in the gospel sharp, if you’ll stand for the brand.’  Now Jim hadn’t a cent, nor no callin’, nor a prospect to his back, but he struts up to the man that was doin’ the talkin’, game as a bantam, an’ he says, ‘The lady ain’t rakin’ in anythin’ but a lettle white chip, in takin’ me, but if she’s willin’, here’s my hand.’

“At which that pore young thing cried harder than ever.  Well, Jim he up an’ marries the girl an’ it turns out fine.  He gets a job herdin’ sheep on shares, an’ she stays with the Rodney outfit till he saves enough to build a cabin.  Things is goin’ with Jim like a prairie afire.  In a few years he acquires a herd of his own, a fine herd, not a scabby sheep in the bunch.  Alida she makes him the best kind of a wife, them kids is the pride of his life, and then, them cursed cattle-men do for him.  Of course, he takes to rustlin’; I’d do more’n rustle if they’d touch mine.”

The pair of broncos that Mrs. Yellett was driving humped their backs like cats as they climbed the steep mountain-road.  With her, driving was an exact science.  It was a treat to see her handle the ribbons.  Mary asked some trifling question about the children and it elicited the information that one of the girls was named Cacta.  “Yes,” she said, “I like new names for children, not old ones that is all frazzled out and folks has suffered an’ died to.  It seems to start ’em fair, like playin’ cards with a new deck.  Cacta’s my oldest daughter, and I named her after the flowers that blooms all over the desert spite of everything, heat, cold, an’ rain an’ alkali dust—­the cactus blooms right through it all.  Even its own thorns don’t seem to fret it none.  I called her plain Cactus till she was three, and along came a sharp studyin’ the flowers an’ weeds out here, and he ‘lowed that Cactus was a boy’s name an’ Cacta was for girls—­called it a feeminin tarnation, or somethin’ like that, so we changed it.  My second daughter ’ain’t got quite so much of a name.  She’s called Clematis.  That holds its own out here pretty well, ’long by the willows on the creek.  Paw ’lowed he was terrible afraid that I’d name the youngest girl Sage-brush, so he spoke to call her Lessie Viola, an’ I giv’ in.  The boys is all plain named, Ben, Jack, and Ned.  Paw wouldn’t hear of a fancy brand bein’ run onto ’em.”