"Thanks," said Dade dryly, though the ashen face of him showed how well
he realized his narrow escape. "I reckon we understand each other now.
I can see by the way you yanked out your gun just now and by the way
you got the drop on Taggart yesterday, that you're some on the shoot.
But I ain't none scared of you. An' now I'm tellin' you why I said
you're a false alarm. I was talkin' to Betty last night. She's read
up a bit, an' I'm parrotin' what she said about you because it's what I
think, too. Your cosmos is all ego. That's what Betty said. Brought
down to cases, what that means is that you've got a bad case of swelled
head. So far as you're concerned there's only one person in the world.
That's you. Nobody else counts. You've been thinkin' about yourself
so much that you can't find time to think about anybody else. There's
other people in the world as good as you--better. Betty's one of them.
She's a good girl an' you an' me'll hitch all right as long as you
don't go to bullyin' her. I reckon that's all."

"Meanin' that you'll let me hang around as long as I'm good," sneered
Calumet in a dangerously soft voice. He was trying to work himself
into a rage, but the effort was futile. Something in Dade's quiet,
matter-of-fact voice had a dulling, cooling effect on him. Besides, he
knew that an attack on Dade would be resented by Betty, and he felt a
strange reluctance toward further antagonizing her. "You Texas folks
are sure clever at workin' your jaws," he sneered, when Dade did not
answer. "But I reckon that lets you out. When I'm lookin' for advice
from women an' kids mebbe I'll call on you an' Betty, but if I don't
you'll understand that I'm followin' my own trail. You've got away
with one call because--well, because I was fool enough to let you.
Mebbe another time I won't feel so foolish."

There were few words spoken between them during the following hours of
the morning, though several times Dade caught Calumet watching him with
a puzzled, amused smile in which there was a sort of slumbering
ferocity. By the middle of the morning the front of the ranchhouse had
been raised with the assistance of jacks, the old rotted sills taken
out and new ones substituted. About an hour before noon, while
Calumet, in woolen shirt and overalls, his face dirty, his hair
tousled, and his temper none too good, was wedging the sill tight
against the studding above it, he became aware of Betty standing near
hi