Mr. Scraggs | Page 6

fence, and my record is dotted with marriages worse than a 'Pache outbreak with corpses and burning homes. I ain't any kind of proposition to tie up to a nice girl like you, and I swear by my honor that nothing was further from my thoughts than matrimony--not meanin' any slur on you, for if I'd found you before, I might have been a happy man--Well, here I stand: if you'll marry me, say the word!' By thunder, we gave him a cheer that shook the roof. You can laugh if you like, but it was a noble deed.
"The girl reached out her left hand--so help me Moses! She liked him! I took a careful squint at old Scraggsy, in this new light, and I want to tell you that there was something kind of fine in that long lean face of his, and when he took the girl's hand he looked like a gentleman.
"You wouldn't think that holding a gun to her head, and threatenin' to blow her brains out was just the touch that would set a maiden's heart tremblin' for a man, but if a woman takes a fancy to you, your habits and customs, manners and morals, disposition, personal appearance, financial standing and way of doing things generally is only a little matter of detail.
"'How will this figger out legally?' E. G. W. asked the minister.
"The minister, he was a cheerful, practical sort of lad, ready to indorse anything that would smooth the rugged road of life.
"'Do you renounce the Mormon religion?' he asks.
"'Bet your life,' says Scraggs. 'And all its works.'
"'That settles it,' says the minister. 'Besides, I don't think anybody will ever come poking out here to make trouble--whenever you say the word.'
"'One minute,' says Scraggs, and he turned to the girl very gentle. 'Are you doing this of your own free will, and not because I lugged you out here?'
"'Yessir,' says she.
"'You want me, just as I stand?'
"'Yessir.'
"'Keno. I won't forget it.' Then he put his hand on her head, took off his hat, and raised his face. 'O God!' he prays, 'you know what a miserable time I've had in this line before. I admit it was nine-tenths my fault, but now I call for an honest deck and the hands played above the table. And make me act decent for the sake of this nice little girl. Amen.' Then he pulled a twenty-dollar gold piece out of his pocket and plunked her down before the minister, 'Shoot,' says he. 'You're faded.'
"Well. there old Scraggs--I say 'old,' but the man weren't more than forty--celebrated his eighty-first marriage in that old bull-pen, and they lived as happy ever after as any story book. Which knocks general principles. Probably it was because that no man was ever treated whiter than she treated him, and no woman was ever treated whiter than he treated her; he had the knack of bein' awful good and loving to her, without being foolish. Experience will tell, and he'd experienced a heap of the other side.
"And now, what do you think of Aleck? The scare we threw into him that night wound up his moanin' and grievin' about the other girl. He never cheeped once after that, but got fat and hearty, and when I left the ranch he was makin' up to a widow with four children, as bold as brass. There was more poetry in E. G. W, than there was in Aleck, after all."

II
IN THE TOILS
Mr. Ezekiel George Washington Scraggs, late of Missouri, later of Utah, and latest of North Dakota, stood an even six-foot unshod. He had an air of leanness, almost emaciation, not borne out by any fact of anatomy. We make our hasty estimates from the face. Brother Scraggs's face was gaunt. Misfortune had written there, in a large, angular hand, "It might have been"--those saddest words of tongue or pen. The pensive sorrow of E. G. W.'s countenance had misled many people--not but what the sorrow was genuine enough (Scraggsy explained it in four words, "I've been a Mormon"), but the expression of a blighted, helpless youth carried into early middle age was an appearance only: I mean it was nothing to bank on in dealing with Zeke. Still, if you could see those eyes, dimmed with a settled melancholy; those mustachios, which, absorbing all the capillary possibilities of his head, drooped like weeping willows from his upper lip; and above, the monumental nose--that springing prow that once so grandly parted the waves of adverse circumstance, until, blown by the winds of ambition, his bark was cast ruined on the shores of matrimony--you would not so much blame the man who mistook E. G. Washington Scraggs for a something not too difficult. Red Saunders said that Scraggsy looked like a forlorn hope