erous or panicky at being a slave to
anybody else. Love's sweet servitude was a thing of which he had no
comprehension. Men he had seen in love impressed him as lunatics, and
lunacy was a thing he had never considered worth analyzing. But
comradeship with men was different from love with women. There was no
servitude in comradeship. It was a business proposition, a square deal
between men who did not pursue each other, but who shared the risks of
trail and river and mountain in the pursuit of life and treasure. Men
and women pursued each other, and one must needs bend the other to his
will or hers. Comradeship was different. There was no slavery about
it; and though he, a strong man beyond strength's seeming, gave far
more than he received, he gave not something due but in royal largess,
his gifts of toil or heroic effort falling generously from his hands.
To pack for days over the gale-swept passes or across the
mosquito-ridden marshes, and to pack double the weight his comrade
packed, did not involve unfairness or compulsion. Each did his best.
That was the business essence of it. Some men were stronger than
others--true; but so long as each man did his best it was fair
exchange, the business spirit was observed, and the square deal
obtained.

But with women--no. Women gave little and wanted all. Women had
apron-strings and were prone to tie them about any man who looked twice
in their direction. There was the Virgin, yawning her head off when he
came in and mightily pleased that he asked her to dance. One dance was
all very well, but because he danced twice and thrice with her and
several times more, she squeezed his arm when they asked him to sit in
at poker. It was the obnoxious apron-string, the first of the many
compulsions she would exert upon him if he gave in. Not that she was
not a nice bit of a woman, healthy and strapping and good to look upon,
also a very excellent dancer, but that she was a woman with all a
woman's desire to rope him with her apron-strings and tie him hand and
foot for the branding. Better poker. Besides, he liked poker as well
as he did dancing.

He resisted the pull on his arm by the mere negative mass of him, and
said:--

"I sort of feel a hankering to give you-all a flutter."

Again came the pull on his arm. She was trying to pass the
apron-string around him. For the fraction of an instant he was a
savage, dominated by the wave of fear and murder that rose up i