The Fighting Shepherdess

"To the end of the road," Teeters replied soberly.

Bowers nodded.

"So somebody told me. Are you goin' to town anyways soon?"

"To-morrow."

"Good! Will you take a message to Lingle?"

Teeters assented.

"Tell him for me that the night of the murder there was a onery breed-lookin' feller that smelt like a piece of Injun-tanned buckskin a settin' in Doc Fussel's drug store. He acted oneasy, as I come to think it over, and he went out jest before the killin'. I never thought of it at the time, but he might have been the feller that done it."

"I'll tell Lingle, but I don't think there's anything in it."

"Why?"

Teeters' eyes narrowed.

"Because I know where the gun come from!"

Bowers looked his astonishment.

"I'd swear to that gun stock on a stack of Bibles," Teeters continued. "It was swelled from layin' in water, and a blacksmith riveted it. The blacksmith died last summer or by now we'd a had his affidavit."

"Ain't that sick'nin'!" Bowers referred to the exasperating demise of the blacksmith.

"Anyway, Lingle's workin' like a horse on the case, and I think he'll clear it up directly. How's she standin' it?"

"Like a soldier."

"She's got sand."

"She's made of it," laconically, "and I aims to stay by her."

Teeters hesitated; then, for the first time in his life he gave his hand to a sheepherder, and, at parting, as further evidence that the caste line was down between them, said heartily: "Come over next Sunday and eat with me; I got six or eight cackle-berries I been savin' fur somethin' special."

"Thanks. Aigs is my favor-ite fruit," Bowers replied appreciatively.

The next day Teeters went into the post office at Prouty with more letters than he had written in all his life together. The Major was at the window perspiring under the verbal attack of a highly incensed lady.

A deeply interested listener, Teeters gathered that the postmaster's faulty orthography was to blame for the contumely heaped upon him. In vain the Major protested his innocence of any malicious intent when, after hearing a rumor to the effect that the lady had died during an absence from Prouty, he wrote "diseased" upon a letter addressed to her, and returned it to the sender.

"I'm goin' to sue you for libel!" was her parting shot at him.

"Like as not she'll do it," said the Major, despondently, and added with bitterness, "I wisht I'd died before I got this post office! Teeters," he continued, impressively, "lemme tell you somethin': anybody can git a post office by writin' a postal card to Washington, but men have gone down to their graves tryin' to git rid of 'em. The only sure way is to heave 'em into the street and jump out o' the country between sundown and daylight.