WANTED: A WIFE "I couldn't have ate at Sim's place if he would of asked me to," grumbled Wid Gardner aloud to himself as he busied himself about his own household duties in his bachelor cabin.

"He's too damn dirty, like I said, and that's a fact." Wid's cabin itself was in general appearance no better, if no worse, than the average in the Two Forks Valley.

There was a bed on a rude pole frame--little more than a heap of blankets as they had been thrown aside that morning.

The table still held the dishes which had been used, but at least these had been washed, and there was thrown across them what had served as a dish-towel, a washed and dried, fairly clean flour sack which had been ripped out and turned into a towel.

There was a box nailed up behind the stove which served as a sort of store room for the scant supplies, and this had a flap at the top, so that it was partly curtained off.