If you could have
heard him telling all this, Mamma, in the dying light, his strong face
and quiet voice so impressive! I shall never forget it. Well, the girl
had brought some bread in a handkerchief, which he had not eaten, and
they shared that together, and when it was dark they slept under the
stars; and "by then I'd just grown to love her," he said, and "we were
quite content to die together if we couldn't push on to the big camp;
but we meant to make an almighty try."
They did get there, finally, and the sheriff married them, and here his
voice broke a little and was so low I could hardly hear him. There were
no two people ever so happy, he said. He built a little shack of boards
not twelve feet long, "way up on the mountain," and she kept it like a
new pin, and was dainty and sweet and loving, and when he came in from
the mines she would run to meet him "as gentle as a fawn," and he never
wanted to go to the saloons or drink like the other men, "though I was
always pretty handy with my gun," he said, "and had been through the
whole ugly show."
And presently he began to make a little money and would contrive to
give her small things for the house; it gave her more pleasure than
anything in the world to make it pretty, so that the little shed was
the admiration of all the other miners' wives.
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