“I’m skipping over much what followed; but one afternoon when I rides up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of beeves that was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go off.  I waits at the hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on private affairs.  In a little while Luke comes out and gives some orders to some of his Mexican hands, and they go and hitch up sundry and divers vehicles; and mighty soon out comes one of the sisters or so and some of the two or three men.  But two of the two or three men carries between ’em the corkscrew man who spoke in a tone of voice, and lays him flat down in one of the wagons.  And they all might have been seen wending their way away.

“‘Bud,’ says Luke to me, ’I want you to fix up a little and go up to San Antone with me.’

“‘Let me get on my Mexican spurs,’ says I, ‘and I’m your company.’

“One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with Mrs. Summers and the kid.  We rides to Encinal and catches the International, and hits San Antone in the morning.  After breakfast Luke steers me straight to the office of a lawyer.  They go in a room and talk and then come out.

“‘Oh, there won’t be any trouble, Mr. Summers,’ says the lawyer.  ’I’ll acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts to-day; and the matter will be put through as promptly as possible.  Law and order reigns in this state as swift and sure as any in the country.’

“‘I’ll wait for the decree if it won’t take over half an hour,’ says Luke.

“‘Tut, tut,’ says the lawyer man.  ’Law must take its course.  Come back day after to-morrow at half-past nine.’

“At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a folded document.  And Luke writes him out a check.

“On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger the size of a kitchen door latch on it and says: 

“‘Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.’

“‘Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,’ says I, ’it looks to me like a split.  Couldn’t the lawyer man have made it a strike for you?’

“‘Bud,’ says he, in a pained style, ’that child is the one thing I have to live for. She may go; but the boy is mine!—­think of it—­I have cus-to-dy of the child.’

“‘All right,’ says I.  ’If it’s the law, let’s abide by it.  But I think,’ says I, ’that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary clemency, or whatever is the legal term, in our case.’

“You see, I wasn’t inveigled much into the desirableness of having infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed themselves and sell for so much on the hoof when they grow up.  But Luke was struck with that sort of parental foolishness that I never could understand.  All the way riding from the station back to the ranch, he kept pulling that decree out of his pocket and laying his finger on the back of it and reading off to me the sum and substance of it.  ’Cus-to-dy of the child, Bud,’ says he.  ‘Don’t forget it—­cus-to-dy of the child.’