I hate a hard-handed woman, or one with mushy fingers, but this, as it seemed to me, was a hand excellently good to clasp--warm now, and no longer trembling in the terrors of the night.
"I do not know your name, sir," she said, "but I should like my father to thank you some day." "All ready!" cried the mate.
"My name is Cowles," I began, "and sometime, perhaps--" "All aboard!" cried the mate; and so the oars gave way.
So I did not get the name of the girl I had seen there in the firelight.
What did remain--and that not wholly to my pleasure, so distinct it seemed--was the picture of her high-bred profile, shown in chiaroscuro at the fireside, the line of her chin and neck, the tumbled masses of her hair.

These were things I did not care to remember; and I hated myself as a soft-hearted fool, seeing that I did so.
"Son," said old Auberry to me, after a time, as we trudged along up the bank, stumbling over roots and braided grasses, "that was a almighty fine lookin' gal we brung along with us there." "I didn't notice," said I.
"No," said Auberry, solemnly, "I noticed you didn't take no notice; so you can just take my judgment on it, which I allow is safe.

Are you a married man ?" "Not yet," I said.
"You might do a heap worse than that gal," said Auberry.
"I suppose you're married yourself," I suggested.
"Some," said Auberry, chuckling in the dark.

"In fact, a good deal, I reckon.

My present woman's a Shoshone--we're livin' up Horse Creek, below Laramie.