Chapter THE FIRST

|Many years ago, when Wyoming was new and infested with the bear, the bunko-steerer, the buffalo and the bold, bad man, a little circumstance occurred there which is worthy of notice; and as it has never appeared in the newspapers, I give it as near as my memory will serve me in the narrative.

When Wyoming was a wilderness, and before the civilizing influence of the legislature and Pattee's lottery had toned down the rough outlines of the young commonwealth, there lived over on Horse Creek a ranchman whom we will call Henry Ward Beecher, as a kind of _nom de corral_ as it were.

Henry Ward Beecher was a bachelor, and lived by himself. He did not know the loving influences and gentle yearnfulness of woman's society. His life was a howling wilderness, a wide waste of loneliness and wretchedness, because he was unmated.

Henry Ward Beecher did not know the pleasure of rising in the night and tangling his feet up in a corset lying on the floor, or of brushing his bald head in the morning with a hair brush so full of long, silky hairs that they would wind around his nose and tickle his bald head till he would wish he was dead. He was alone amid the solitude of the mountains, with no companion but a low grade, refractory mule and a flea-bitten, ecru-colored, mongrel dog, with one eye knocked out.

Henry thought, as year succeeded year, that he would make a change, and throw more joy into his humble life m some way or another, but he was making money, and kept busy all the time, so that he neglected it.

Finally one day in spring there came to the Ranche de Henry Ward Beecher a man from Ohio, named Obejoyful Jenkins. He had come west hoping to get a situation as president of a bank on the strength of being an Ohio man; but most all the banks seemed to have all the presidents they needed, so that Obejoyful concluded to compromise the matter, and herd sheep at twenty-five dollars per month and board. He struck Henry Ward Beecher and made a trade with him.

CHAPTER THE TWICE.

|The two men soon became quite friendly, owing to their isolated condition, and told each other all their family secrets. Henry told Obejoyful how his grandfather was hung; and Obejoyful told Henry how he loved a girl in Ohio, named Oleander McTodd, and how he was going to send for her, and marry her as soon as he could raise the scads to bring her west.

Time flew on, and at last Obejoyful had saved up the collateral necessary to send for his soul's idol. He wrote to her, enclosing a post office money order for the amount necessary to pay emigrant fare to the railroad terminus, and also to buy _lignum vito_ cookies, and fire-proof pie, at the lunch counters along the road.

About the day on which Oleander McTodd would naturally arrive at the ranche, Obejoyful was sent up on Stinking Water to round up a bunch of sheep that had escaped, and bring them back to the fold.

Then Henry Ward Beecher shaved' himself, put warm tallow on his boots, swept out the cabin for the first time in nineteen years, and waited for events to shape themselves.