It appears that one was English and the other a tenderfoot.  The tenderfoot was in love with a girl who had filed on a homestead near the ranch on which he was employed, but who was then a waitress in the hotel we were at.  She had not seemed kind to the tenderfoot and he was telling his friend about it.  The Englishman was trying to instruct him as to how to proceed.

“You need to be very circumspect, Johnny, where females are concerned, but you mustn’t be too danged timid either.”

“I don’t know what the devil to say to her; I can barely nod my head when she asks me will I take tea or coffee; and to-night she mixed it because I nodded yes when she said, ‘tea or coffee,’ and it was the dangdest mess I ever tried to get outside of.”

“Well,” the friend counseled, “you just get her into a corner some’eres and say to ’er, ’Dearest ’Attie, I hoffer you my ’and hand my ‘eart.’”

“But I can’t,” wailed Johnny.  “I could never get her into a corner anyway.”

“If you can’t, you’re not hold enough to marry then.  What the ’ell would you do with a woman in the ’ouse if you couldn’t corner ’er?  I tell ’e, women ’ave to ’ave a master, and no man better tackle that job until ’e can be sure ’e can make ’er walk the chalk-line.”

“But I don’t want her to walk any line; I just want her to speak to me.”

“Dang me if I don’t believe you are locoed.  Why, she’s got ’e throwed hand ’og-tied now.  What d’e want to make it any worse for?”

They talked for a long time and the Englishman continued to have trouble with his h’s; but at last Johnny was encouraged to “corner ’er” next morning before they left for their ranch.

We expected to be astir early anyway, and our curiosity impelled us to see the outcome of the friend’s counsel, so we were almost the first in the dining-room next morning.  A rather pretty girl was busy arranging the tables, and soon a boyish-looking fellow, wearing great bat-wing chaps, came in and stood warming himself at the stove.

I knew at once it was Johnny, and I saw “’Attie” blush.  The very indifference with which she treated him argued well for his cause, but of course he didn’t know that.  So when she passed by him and her skirt caught on his big spurs they both stooped at once to unfasten it; their heads hit together with such a bump that the ice was broken, although he seemed to think it was her skull.  I am sure there ought to be a thaw after all his apologies.  After breakfast Mrs. O’Shaughnessy went out to see her friend Cormac O’Toole.  He was the only person in town we could hope to get a team from with which to continue our journey.  This is a hard country on horses at best, and at this time of the year particularly so; few will let their teams go out at any price, but Mrs. O’Shaughnessy had hopes, and she is so persuasive that I felt no one could resist her.  There was a drummer at breakfast who kept “cussing” the country.  He had tried to get a conveyance and had failed; so the cold, the snow, the people, and everything else disgusted him.