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We went forward a few steps, when suddenly I heard Farallone’s voice in my ear. “Isn’t she splendid?” he said, and at the same time he thumped me so violently between the shoulders that I stumbled and fell. For a moment all fear of the man left me on the wings of rage, and I was for attacking him with my fists. But something in his steady eye brought me to my senses.

“Why did you do that?” I meant to speak sharply, but I think I whined.

“Because,” said Farallone, “when the woman spoke up to me you began to brindle and act lion-like and bold. For a minute you looked dangerous–for a little feller. So I patted your back, in a friendly way–as a kind of reminder–a feeble reminder.”

We had dropped behind the others. The groom had caught up with the bride, and from his nervous, irritable gestures I gathered that the poor soul was trying to explain and to ingratiate himself. But she walked on, steadily averted, you might say, her head very high, her shoulders drawn back. The groom, his eyes intent upon her averted face, kept stumbling with his feet.

“Just look,” said Farallone in a friendly voice. “Those whom God hath joined together. What did the press say of it?”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“You lie,” said Farallone. “The press called it an ideal match. My God!” he cried–and so loudly that the bride and the groom must have heard–“think of being a woman like that and getting hitched to a little bit of a fuss with a few fine feathers”; and with a kind of sing-song he began to misquote and extemporize:

“Just for a handful of silver she left me,
Just for a yacht and a mansion of stone,
Just for a little fool nest of fine feathers
She wed Nicodemus and left me alone.”

“But she’d never seen me,” he went on, and mused for a moment. “Having seen me–do you guess what she’s saying to herself? She’s saying: ‘Thank God I’m not too old to begin life over again,’ or thinking it. Look at him! Even you wouldn’t have been such a joke. I’ve a mind to kick the life out of him. One little kick with bare toes. Life? There’s no life in him–nothing but a jenny-wren.”

The groom, who must have heard at least the half of Farallone’s speech, stopped suddenly and waited for us to come up. His face was red and white–blotchy with rage and vindictiveness. When we were within ten feet of him he suddenly drew a revolver and fired it point-blank at Farallone. He had no time for a second shot. Farallone caught his wrist and shook it till the revolver spun through the air and fell at a distance. Then Farallone seated himself and, drawing the groom across his knee, spanked him. Since the beginning of the world children have been punished by spankings, and the event is memorable, if at all, as a something rather comical and domestic. But to see a grown man spanked for the crime of attempted murder is horrible. Farallone’s fury got the better of him, and the blows resounded in the desert. I grappled his arm, and the recoil of it flung me head over heels. When Farallone had finished, the groom could not stand. He rolled in the sands, moaning and hiding his face.

The bride was white as paper; but she had no eye for the groom.

“Did he miss you?” she said.

“No,” said Farallone, “he hit me–Nicodemus hit me.”

“Where?” said the bride.

“In the arm.”

Indeed, the left sleeve of Farallone’s shirt was glittering with blood.

“I will bandage it for you,” she said, “if you will tell me how.”

Farallone ripped open the sleeve of his shirt.

“What shall I bandage it with?” asked the bride.

“Anything,” said Farallone.

The bride turned her back on us, stooped, and we heard a sound of tearing. When she had bandaged Farallone’s wound (it was in the flesh and the bullet had been extracted by its own impetus) she looked him gravely in the face.