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“Yu’ve not ate especially hearty,” said Lin, resting his arms upon the table.

“I’m going,” asserted Lusk. “Governor Barker may start out. I’ve got my interests to look after.”

“Why, sure,” said Lin. “I can’t hope you’ll waste all your time on just me.”

Lusk rose and looked at his wife. “It’ll be ten now before we get to Drybone,” said he. And he went down to the stable.

The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. “I know you seen me,” she said, without looking at him.

“Saw you when?”

“I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me.” She sat twisting and pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing that he wished to reply.

“If you claim that pistol is yourn,” she said next, “I’ll tell you I know better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not have to guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her.”

She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could have seen that McLean’s hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on his arms.

“Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!” The woman uttered another sudden laugh. “I knowed about her–all. Things get heard of in this world. Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own good time, and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!” Her voice grew slow and absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly resumed: “It had travelled around about you and her like it always will travel. It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she would have you, and then told you she would not when she learned about you and me. Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their lives had to have their word about her facing you down you had another wife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him livin’ the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could not have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to no hinderance. Folks said it was plain she did not want yus. It give me a queer feelin’ to see that girl. It give me a wish to tell her to her face that she did not love yus and did not know love. Wait–wait, Lin! Yu’ never hit me yet.”

“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Nor now. I’m not Lusk.”

“Yu’ looked so–so bad, Lin. I never seen yu’ look so bad in old days. Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and say, ‘What do you know about love?’ So I walked in. Lin, she does love yus!”

“Yes,” breathed McLean.

“She was sittin’ back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office, but–“

“I know,” the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.

“It’s snug, the way she has it. ‘Good-afternoon,’ I says. ‘Is this Miss Jessamine Buckner?'”

At his sweetheart’s name the glow in Lin’s eyes seemed to quiver to a flash.

“And she spoke pleasant to me–pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can tell sorrow in a woman’s eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room there, and what was my name. ‘They tell me you claim to know it better than I do,’ I says. ‘They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.’ She put her hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin’ at me without never speaking. ‘Maybe I am not so welcome now,’ I says. ‘One minute,’ says she. ‘Let me get used to it.’ And she sat down.

“Lin, she is a square-lookin’ girl. I’ll say that for her.

“I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don’t know why, but I kep’ a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen your six-shooter right by it–and, oh, Lin, hadn’t I knowed your face before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear Creek? It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right out different from what I’d meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.