Jay Bird's Judgement

At the rough-and-tumble Cross J ranch, Chuck Warner comes home from town with mail-order catalogs, a bruised ego, and a suspiciously practical idea: the boss, J. B. Whittaker, may need a wife almost as badly as he needs a decent cook. When Whittaker blurts out that he'd pay a thousand dollars for a woman who could run his table, Chuck and the ranch hands seize on the remark and launch a matchmaking scheme that is equal parts helpful and disastrous. With Ricky Henderson's letter-writing talent, they begin courting local women on Whittaker's behalf, hoping to solve the cooking problem and perhaps his loneliness too. Instead, the ranch erupts into a full-scale comic confusion of jealous husbands, mistaken proposals, rival cowmen, and unexpected arrivals. Women appear at the porch in increasing numbers, each tied to a different letter and misunderstanding, until the sheriff, a fake smallpox scare, and Doc Milliken's improvisations are needed to restore order. In the end, Chuck uncovers the real culprit: Ricky mailed the wrong letters, and the whole romance racket was built on a mix-up. A lively Western farce of hunger, matchmaking, and frontier chaos, it turns a bad dinner into a hilariously tangled search for love. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.