n that room of hers. She had flowers and things
around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen
your six-shooter right by it--and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face
before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear
Creek? It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right
out different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.

"'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could
you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me
madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they
report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and
hard work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to
yus uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more
that was leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced.
I knowed your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first
time how men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me
go on, and when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to
her, 'has hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'

"'I know," she says, thoughtful-like.

"And at her whispering that way I gets madder.

"'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that
you have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though
different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that
luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never
suspicion the place--but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is
the kind that breaks--if any kind does that. You may sit till the gray
hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got manhood
like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin' the
best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a
while. He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss
Jessamine. 'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait,
Lin, wait. Yus needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's
walled up for a while."

"She could have told you it was a lie," said the cow-puncher.

"She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.'
'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus
wants him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second
Best.'

"Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!

"