m of your garment. It wouldn't be right. It maybe ain't
right for me to think of meeting you again; but it's right this once."

She didn't answer at all. He come to what seemed to trouble him.

"Is it the money?" he says again. "What's money if you've got nothing
else?"

"Not much," says she; "not very much."

"I've not coveted it," says he. "It's another commandment I've broke.
I've coveted that which was my neighbor's. I've coveted you--no more, so
much! If you and I had a shack on the Yellow Bull out there, and forty
acres to start with," says he, "out where the sun shines all the time,
and the wind is sweet, and the mountains rise up around you----"

"Don't!" says she again. "Don't! Please go away--I can't stand that."

I couldn't stand it neither; so I opened the door.

XVI

HOW I WAS FOREMAN

They jumped apart--or farther apart--when I walked out. They wasn't
holding hands, but she must of been looking at him and him at her.

"Miss Wright," says I, quiet--the first time I ever called her Miss
Wright in all my life--"Miss Wright," says I, "come up to the house."

"Curly," says she, "oh, don't--don't!"

But she seen I didn't have no gun.

"Get across there quick!" says I to him.

"You overheard!" says he. "You overheard what I've been saying?"

"All of it," says I. "It was my business to. Of all the low-down things
any man ever done in all his life, that's what you done now. I heard it
all."

"Stop!" says he. "I won't stand that for a minute."

"You'll stand it for a lot longer than that," says I. "If you show this
side the fence again I'll kill you!"

"Curly!" says he. "Why, Curly!"--like he was surprised. "Is it like
that?"

"That's what it's like," says I. "Don't never doubt we can take care of
our womenfolks. It's my own fault this has happened. I ought to of
watched her closter. I ought never to of allowed you on our dock, let
alone mixing with you. I thought you was more of a man than this," says
I.

When I said that Bonnie Bell jumped and throwed her arms around my neck,
and held on with both hands.

"Curly," says she, "stop! I'll not have this. Stop, I say!"

"You'll have this, and a lot more," says I to her, "till this thing is
settled. Let me alone with him. Haven't your pa and me give up our lives
for you? It's a fine trade you're trying to make; to trade us for a
low-down coward like this. They built that fence, not us. Hell could
freeze before your pa or me would ever