ause you was so damn softhearted you couldn't
fire me. You didn't use no judgment or you'd of fired me then, and a
hundred times since then. All this whole mix-up was because I didn't
have no brains--I couldn't see a load of hay; yet it was me that was
doing all the seeing--you never took no hand in it at all. Shore, I fell
down! You ain't firing me right now; I fire myself. I've come back to
say that to you, Colonel. I taken about a week in Cody to think it all
over--with help."

He only set and looked at me, and I had a hard time trying to talk. I
told him where them two was living.

Then all at once the whole picture of the old days, when him and me was
young, seemed to come up before him. He flared up like only part of him
had been afire inside. He got up and walked up and down, with his hands
clinched tight.

"Damn you all!" says he, and his eyes was like coals now. "What have I
done to any of you? What have I done wrong to anybody that I should
deserve this? Can't you remember when you was a man, Curly? Can't you
remember when you and me set on the gate of the big pasture, with our
rifles acrost our knees, and waited for them sheepmen to come up and try
to get them sheep through us? Did they get through? No; no one had us
buffaloed. That was when you and me was men, Curly.

"What have we done now? We let this damn hypocrite, Dave Wisner, get the
best of us all the way down the line. He's married his hired man to my
girl; and he's set up that hired man out on the old home ranch, where
her ma and me made our first start. Could anything be harder for me to
bear than that? You was on the gate, Curly; and you let 'em through."

"He said they was plumb happy--them two, Colonel," says I. "What in hell
could I do, Colonel? It all come over me. I could see the sun shining; I
could feel the wind blowing again, like it was in the old days."

"Happy!" says he. He was half whispering now and his voice was like that
of a right old man. "Happy! So was I--so was her ma--out there in the
old log house, with the mountains, and the sun shining, and the wind
blowing. Curly," says he, "what made her throw her life away? What made
us come here at all?"

"I wish you'd stake me to some ham and aigs, Colonel," says I, "before I
go. I met a fellow a while back that was broke; so I haven't et much."

"Go eat, man," says he, "And don't talk to me about going away."

"What's that?" says I.

"You're a damn, worthless, trifling cowha