rious detachment, as though he were telling something
that he saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a battle from a
far vantage-point might report to a blind man standing near, Sinnet said:

"P'r'aps Ricketts didn't know the whole story; p'r'aps Clint didn't know
it all to tell him; p'r'aps Clint didn't remember it all. P'r'aps he
didn't remember anything except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that
Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He'd only be thinking of
the thing that mattered most to him--that his life was over, an' that a
man had put a bullet in him, an'--"

Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and
continued: "As I say, maybe he didn't remember everything; he had been
drinkin' a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn't used to liquor, and couldn't
stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He
always gets drunk when he first comes south to spend the winter with his
girl Em'ly." He paused a moment, then went on a little more quickly.
"Greevy was proud of her--couldn't even bear her being crossed in any way;
and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody Greevy
quarrelled too."

"I don't want to know anything about her," broke in Buckmaster, roughly.
"She isn't in this thing. I'm goin' to get Greevy. I bin waitin' for him,
an' I'll git him."

"You're going to kill the man that killed your boy, if you can, Buck; but
I'm telling my story in my own way. You told Rickett's story; I'll tell
what I've heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know all there is
that anybody else knows--or suspicions about it."

"I know enough. Greevy done it, an' I'm here."

With no apparent coherence and relevancy Sinnet continued, but his voice
was not so even as before. "Em'ly was a girl that wasn't twice alike. She
was changeable. First it was one, then it was another, and she didn't seem
to be able to fix her mind. But that didn't prevent her leadin' men on.
She wasn't changeable, though, about her father. She was to him what your
boy was to you. There she was like you, ready to give everything up for
her father."

"I tell y' I don't want to hear about her," said Buckmaster, getting to
his feet and setting his jaws. "You needn't talk to me about her. She'll
git over it. I'll never git over what Greevy done to me or to Clint--jest
twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to do."

He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the hollow of