CHAPTER XIII.
ONE OF THE FAIR SEX COMES TO HIS RESCUE.
Before I comprehended that the indomitable female stood beside me, the train was puffing pitilessly away.
"Oh, stop! stop! stop! stop!" I called and yelled in an agony of apprehension; but I might as well have appealed to the wind that went whistling by.
"Perhaps the locomotive will hear you, and down brakes of its own accord," said Miss Spitfire, scornfully.

"I told ma I was gwine to get a husband 'fore I got to Californy, an' I _have_ got one.

You jest set down on that bowlder, an' don't you try to make a move till the train from 'Frisco comes along.

Then you git aboard along with me, an' if there ain't no minister to be found in them cars, I'll haul you off at Columbus, where there's two to my certain knowledge." She had her revolver in her hand, directed _point blank_ at my quivering, quaking heart.

Though I am bashful, I am no coward, and I thought for full two minutes that I'd let her fire away, if such was her intention.
"Better be dead than live in a land so full of women that I can never hope for any comfort!" I thought, bitterly; and so confronted the enemy in the growing calmness of despair.
"Ain't you a-going fur to set down on that bowlder ?" "No, madam, I am _not_! I would rather be shot than married, at any time.