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“I’m a mighty poor cook,” confessed Alf on the first occasion, a hungry, harassed look in his eyes. “But anything’s better’n starvin’, ain’t it?”

“It shore is,” said Anderson with feeling.

“I ain’t seen a petticoat around my house since half-past nine this mornin’,” lamented Alf, upsetting a pan of milk while trying to get a plate of cold ham out of the icebox. “It’s terrible.”

“Lemme take your knife, Alf. I’ll peel the pertatoes–if you’ll tell me where they are.”

“I don’t know where anything is,” said Alf, leaning dejectedly against the kitchen sink.

“Well,” said Anderson, “let’s look.”

“If the election was a week further off, I’d give up an’ go to drinkin’ again,” said Alf on another occasion. “I’d sooner drink myself to death than starve. Starvation is a terrible end, Anderson. Worse than hangin’, they say.”

“Only four days more,” sighed Anderson, clipping off a hunk of bologna. “My wife says if I’ll hold out till after election, she won’t never leave the kitchen ag’in long as she lives.”

“That’s what mine says. Sherman was only half right. War may be hell for men, but, by gosh, women are hell for war. An’ that’s what it is–war, Anderson, war to the hilt. Every woman in town’s got her knife out an’, my God, how they’re slashin’ each other! There won’t be a whole woman left.”

“Well, I’d be satisfied with half a one,” mused Anderson, a faraway look in his eyes.

The day before the election, Mrs. Crow played her trump card. She had treasured an open boast made years before by the disappointed old maid who now opposed her. Minnie, before attaining years of discretion and still smarting under the failures of youth, had spitefully announced that she was a spinster from choice. With great scorn she had stated, while sitting on Mrs. Crow’s porch, that she would die an old maid a hundred times over sooner than marry any one in Tinkletown. And, she added, the best proof that she meant what she said was the fact that nearly every man in town had asked her to marry him before he asked any one else!

The news spread like wildfire the instant Mrs. Crow released it. Mrs. Crow’s veracity was not a thing to be questioned.

When the returns were all in, Mrs. Crow was found to have received 573 votes (women included), out of a total of 601 cast. Miss Stitzenberg held the German vote solid, including seven from her own sex who could afford to disregard the slander because they had been safely married in Germany long before coming to Tinkletown.

* * * * *

The day after the new marshal’s induction into office Anderson appeared with his star glittering so brightly that it dazzled the eye. His shoes were polished, his clothes brushed and–shocking to relate–his trousers creased. In all his career as marshal he had never gone to such extremes as this. He was, however, not in a happy frame of mind. His customary aplomb was missing.

“Well, of all the–” began Alf Reesling. Then, before Anderson could put in a word of warning, he shouted to the group in front of Lamson’s store: “Hey! Look at the dude!”

Anderson, very red in the face, declined a seat on a soap box.

“If I’d knowed she was goin’ to act like this, I’d a voted ag’in her myself,” he said rather wanly. “She started in bossin’ me the very minute she got my place as marshal. She’s laid down the law to me, an’, by crickety, she says if I’m goin’ to be her deputy I’ve got to look like this every day. Look at them shoes! And these pants! No, I can’t set down. I don’t dare risk sp’ilin’ the creases my daughter Susie put in ’em ‘fore I was up this mornin’.”