The thing I have done is to marry Mr. Stewart.  It was such an inconsistent thing to do that I was ashamed to tell you.  And, too, I was afraid you would think I didn’t need your friendship and might desert me.  Another of my friends thinks that way.

I hope my eyes will be better soon and then I will write you a long letter.

Your old friend with a new name,

  ELINORE STEWART.

X

THE STORY OF CORA BELLE

     August 15, 1910.

DEAR MRS. CONEY,—­

...  Grandma Edmonson’s birthday is the 30th of May, and Mrs. O’Shaughnessy suggested that we give her a party.  I had never seen Grandma, but because of something that happened in her family years ago which a few narrow-heads whom it didn’t concern in the least cannot forgive or forget, I had heard much of her.  The family consists of Grandma, Grandpa, and little Cora Belle, who is the sweetest little bud that ever bloomed upon the twigs of folly.

The Edmonsons had only one child, a daughter, who was to have married a man whom her parents objected to solely because he was a sheep-man, while their sympathies were with the cattle-men, although they owned only a small bunch.  To gain their consent the young man closed out his interest in sheep, at a loss, filed on a splendid piece of land near them, and built a little home for the girl he loved.  Before they could get to town to be married Grandpa was stricken with rheumatism.  Grandma was already almost past going on with it, so they postponed the marriage, and as that winter was particularly severe, the young man took charge of the Edmonson stock and kept them from starving.  As soon as he was able he went for the license.

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy and a neighbor were hunting some cattle that had wandered away and found the poor fellow shot in the back.  He was not yet dead and told them it was urgently necessary for them to hurry him to the Edmonsons’ and to get some one to perform the marriage ceremony as quickly as possible, for he could not live long.  They told him such haste meant quicker death because he would bleed more; but he insisted, so they got a wagon and hurried all they could.  But they could not outrun death.  When he knew he could not live to reach home, he asked them to witness all he said.  Everything he possessed he left to the girl he was to have married, and said he was the father of the little child that was to come.  He begged them to befriend the poor girl he had to leave in such a condition, and to take the marriage license as evidence that he had tried to do right.  The wagon was stopped so the jolting would not make death any harder, and there in the shadow of the great twin buttes he died.

They took the body to the little home he had made, and Mrs. O’Shaughnessy went to the Edmonsons’ to do what she could there.  Poor Cora Jane didn’t know how terrible a thing wounded pride is.  She told her parents her misdeeds.  They couldn’t see that they were in any way to blame.  They seemed to care nothing for her terrible sorrow nor for her weakened condition.  All they could think of was that the child they had almost worshiped had disgraced them; so they told her to go.