The buckboard and team belonged to Sam Holly, a cattleman from the Big Muddy. Sam was driving, and with him was a stout, smooth-faced man, wearing a frock coat and a high silk hat. That was the county judge, Mr. Dave Hackett, candidate for reelection. Sam was escorting him about the county, among the camps, to shake up the sovereign voters.
The men got out, hitched the team to a mesquite, and walked toward the fire.
Instantly every man in camp, except the Marquis, Miss Sally, and Pink Saunders, who had to play host, uttered a frightful yell of assumed terror and fled on all sides into the darkness.
'Heavens alive!' exclaimed Hackett, 'are we as ugly as that? How do you do, Mr. Saunders? Glad to see you again. What are you doing to my hat, Holly?'
'I was afraid of this hat,' said Sam Holly, meditatively. He had taken the hat from Hackett's head and was holding it in his hand, looking dubiously around at the shadows beyond the firelight where now absolute stillness reigned. 'What do you think, Saunders?'
Pink grinned.
'Better elevate it some,' he said, in the tone of one giving disinterested advice. 'The light ain't none too good. I wouldn't want it on my head.'
Holly stepped upon the hub of a hind wheel of the grub wagon and hung the hat upon a limb of a live-oak. Scarcely had his foot touched the ground when the crash of a dozen six-shooters split the air, and the hat fell to the ground riddled with bullets.
A hissing noise was heard as if from a score of rattlesnakes, and now the cow-punchers emerged on all sides from the darkness, stepping high, with ludicrously exaggerated caution, and 'hist'-ing to one another to observe the utmost prudence in approaching. They formed a solemn, wide circle about the hat, gazing at it in manifest alarm, and seized every few moments by little stampedes of panicky flight.
'It's the varmint,' said one in awed tones, 'that flits up and down in the low grounds at night, saying, `Willie-wallo!''
'It's the venomous Kypootum,' proclaimed another. 'It stings after it's dead, and hollers after it's buried.'
'It's the chief of the hairy tribe,' said Phonograph Davis. 'But it's stone dead, now, boys.'
'Don't you believe it,' demurred Dry-Creek. 'It's only 'possumin'.' It's the dreaded Highgollacum fantod from the forest. There's only one way to destroy its life.'
He led forward Old Taller, the 240-pound cow-puncher. Old Taller placed the hat upright on the ground and solemnly sat upon it, crushing it as flat as a pancake.
Hackett had viewed these proceedings with wide-open eyes. Sam Holly saw that his anger was rising and said to him:
'Here's where you win or lose, Judge. There are sixty votes on the Diamond Cross. The boys are trying your mettle. Take it as a joke, and I don't think you'll regret it.' And Hackett saw the point and rose to the occasion.
Advancing to where the slayers of the wild beast were standing above its remains and declaring it to be at last defunct, he said, with deep earnestness:
'Boys, I must thank you for this gallant rescue. While driving through the arroyo that cruel monster that you have so fearlessly and repeatedly slaughtered sprang upon us from the tree tops. To you I shall consider that I owe my life, and also, I hope, reelection to the office for which I am again a candidate. Allow me to hand you my card.'
The cow-punchers, always so sober-faced while engaged in their monkey-shines, relaxed into a grin of approval.
But Phonograph Davis, his appetite for fun not yet appeased, had something more up his sleeve.
'Pardner,' he said, addressing Hackett with grave severity, 'many a camp would be down on you for turnin' loose a pernicious varmint like that in it; but, bein' as we all escaped without loss of life, we'll overlook it. You can play square with us if you'll do it.'
'How's that?' asked Hackett suspiciously.
'You're authorized to perform the sacred rights and lefts of mattermony, air you not?'
'Well, yes,' replied Hackett. 'A marriage ceremony conducted by me would be legal.'
'A wrong air to be righted in this here camp,' said Phonograpby, virtuously. 'A a-ristocrat have slighted a 'umble but beautchoos female wat's pinin' for his affections. It's the jooty of the camp to drag forth the haughty descendant of a hundred--or maybe a hundred and twenty-five--earls, even so at the p'int of a lariat, and jine him to the weepin' lady. Fellows! roundup Miss Sally and the Marquis, there's goin' to be a weddin'.'
This whim of Phonograph's was received with whoops of appreciation. The cow-punchers started to apprehend the principals of the proposed ceremony.
'Kindly prompt me,' said Hackett, wiping his forehead, though the night was cool, 'how far this thing is to be carried. And might I expect any further portions of my raiment to be mistaken for wild animals and killed?'
'The boys are livelier than usual to-night,' said Saunders. 'The ones they are talking about marrying are two of the boys--a herd rider and the cook. It's another joke. You and Sam will have to sleep here to-night anyway; p'rhaps you'd better see 'em through with it. Maybe they'll quiet down after that.'
The matchmakers found Miss Sally seated on the tongue of the grub wagon, calmly smoking his pipe. The Marquis was leaning idly against one of the trees under which the supply tent was pitched.
Into this tent they were both hustled, and Phonograph, as master of ceremonies, gave orders for the preparations.
'You, Dry-Creek and Jimmy, and Ben and Taller--hump yourselves to the wildwood and rustle flowers for the blow-out--mesquite'll do--and get that Spanish dagger blossom at the corner of the horse corral for the bride
