"it's right, then--dead right?"

"When I've settled with her father--and Jake."

Arizona held out his horny, claw-like hand. "Shake," he said. "I'm
glad, real glad."

They gripped for a moment, then the cowpuncher turned away, and sat
staring out over the prairie. Tresler, watching him, wondered at that
long abstraction. The man's face had a softened look.

"We all fall victims to it sooner or later, Arizona," he ventured
presently. "It comes once in a man's lifetime, and it comes for good
or ill."

"Twice--me."

The hard fact nipped Tresler's sentimental mood in the bud.

"Ah!"

The other continued his study of the sky-line. "Yup," he said at last.
"One died, an' t'other didn't hatch out."

"I see."

It was no use attempting sympathy. When Arizona spoke of himself, when
he chose to confide his life's troubles to any one, he had a way of
stating simple facts merely as facts; he spoke of them because it
suited his pessimistic mood.

"Yup. The first was kind o' fady, anyways--sort o' limp in the
backbone. Guess I'd got fixed wi' her 'fore I knew a heap. Must 'a'
bin. Yup, she wus fancy in her notions. Hated sharin' a pannikin o'
tea wi' a friend; guess I see her scrape out a fry-pan oncet. I 'lows
she had cranks. Guess she hadn't a pile o' brain, neither. She never
could locate a hog from a sow, an' as fer stridin' a hoss, hell itself
couldn't 'a' per-suaded her. She'd a notion fer settin' sideways, an'
allus got muleish when you guessed she wus wrong. Yup, she wus red-hot
on the mission sociables an' eatin' off'n chiny, an' wa'n't satisfied
wi' noospaper on the table; an' took the notion she'd got pimples, an'
worried hell out o' her old man till he bo't a razor an' turned his
features into a patch o' fall ploughin', an' kind o' bulldozed her
mother into lashin' her stummick wi' some noofangled fixin' as
wouldn't meet round her nowheres noways. An' she wus kind o' finnicky
wi' her own feedin', too. Guess some wall-eyed cuss had took her into
Sacramento an' give her a feed at one of them Dago joints, wher' they
disguise most everythin' wi' langwidge, an' ile, an' garlic, till you
hate yourself. Wal, she died. Mebbe she's got all them things handy
now. But I ain't sayin' nothin' mean about her; she jest had her
notions. Guess it come from her mother. I 'lows she wus kind o' struck
on fool things an' fixin's. Can't blame her noways. Guess I wus mostly
sudden them days. Luv ut fust sight is a real good thing w