blowed! Ther' 's example enough when some stranger comes unbeknownst
slap onter a man hanged to a tree and plugged full of holes. _That's_
an example, and _he_ knows what it means. Wot more do ye want? But
then those Vigilantes is allus clingin' and hangin' onter some mere
scrap o'the law they're pretendin' to despise. It makes me sick! Why,
when Jake Myers shot your ole Aunt Viney's second husband, and I laid
in wait for Jake afterwards in the Butternut Hollow, did _I_ tie him
to his hoss and fetch him down to your Aunt Viney's cabin 'for an
example' before I plugged him? No!" in deep disgust. "No! Why, I just
meandered through the wood, careless-like, till he comes out, and I
just rode up to him, and I said"--
But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before. Even one's
dearest relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration. "I know,
dad," she interrupted; "but this yer man,--this hoss-thief,--did _he_
get clean away without gettin' hurt at all?"
"He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep
away, too. So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about a 'dyin'
stranger' to Rube. He won't swaller it."
"All the same, dad," returned the girl cheerfully, "I reckon to say
it, and say _more_; I'll tell him that ef _he_ manages to get away
too, I'll marry him--there! But ye don't ketch Rube takin' any such
risks in gettin' ketched, or in gettin' away arter!"
Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a
perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking his shotgun from
the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow who
had dropped a calf in the far pasture. Inclined as he was to Reuben's
wooing from his eligibility as to property, he was conscious that he
was sadly deficient in certain qualities inherent in the Clay family.
It certainly would be a kind of _mesalliance_.
Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot,
and then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household
duties, to clear away the things while she went up to her own room to
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