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I never knew scientists could rise to such occasions. Old Mangum orally labelled and classified Goodloe and myself easily among the lowest orders of the vertebrates; and in English, too, without going any further into Latin than the simple references to Orgetorix, Rex Helvetii–which is as far as I ever went, myself. And he told us that if he ever caught us around his house again he would add us to his collection.

Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expecting the storm to subside. When we dared to call at the house again May Martha Mangum and her father were gone. Gone!The house they had rented was closed. Their little store of goods and chattels was gone also.

And not a word of farewell to either of us from May Martha–not a white, fluttering note pinned to the hawthorn-bush; not a chalk-mark on the gate-post nor a post-card in the post-office to give us a clew.

For two months Goodloe Banks and I–separately–tried every scheme we could think of to track the runaways. We used our friendship and influence with the ticket-agent, with livery-stable men, railroad conductors, and our one lone, lorn constable, but without results.

Then we became better friends and worse enemies than ever. We forgathered in the back room of Snyder’s saloon every afternoon after work, and played dominoes, and laid conversational traps to find out from each other if anything had been discovered. That is the way of rivals.

Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic way of displaying his own learning and putting me in the class that was reading “Poor Jane Ray, her bird is dead, she cannot play.”Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a contempt for his college learning, and I was always regarded as good- natured, so I kept my temper. And I was trying to find out if he knew anything about May Martha, so I endured his society.

In talking things over one afternoon he said to me:

“Suppose you do find her, Ed, whereby would you profit?Miss Mangum has a mind. Perhaps it is yet uncultured, but she is destined for higher things than you could give her. I have talked with no one who seemed to appreciate more the enchantment of the ancient poets and writers and the modern cults that have assimilated and expended their philosophy of life. Don’t you think you are wasting your time looking for her?”

“My idea,” said I, “of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie. A piano,” I went on, “with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always hitched at a post for ‘the missus ‘–and May Martha Mangum to spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of evenings. That,” said I, “is what is to be; and a fig–a dried, Smyrna, dago-stand fig–for your curriculums, cults, and philosophy.”

“She is meant for higher things,” repeated Goodloe Banks.

“Whatever she is meant for,” I answered, just now she is out of pocket. And I shall find her as soon as I can without aid of the colleges.”

“The game is blocked,” said Goodloe, putting down a domino and we had the beer.

Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came into town and brought me a folded blue paper. He said his grandfather had just died. I concealed a tear, and he went on to say that the old man had jealously guarded this paper for twenty years. He left it to his family as part of his estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules and a hypotenuse of non-arable land.