ob, are you?"

"Yes, I've been thinkin' it over, and I've made up my mind to draw my
time tonight. If you'll put off goin' till mornin', I'll start with
you. We can travel together till our roads branch, anyhow."

"I'll be glad to wait for you, old feller. I didn't know--which way----"

"Wyoming," said Taterleg, sighing. "It's come back on me ag'in."

"Well, a feller has to rove and ramble, I guess."

Taterleg sighed, looking off westward with dreamy eyes. "Yes, if he's
got a girl pullin' on his heart," said he.

The Duke started as if he had been accused, his secret read, his soul
laid bare; he felt the blood burn in his face, and mount to his eyes
like a drift of smoke. But Taterleg was unconscious of this sudden
embarrassment, this flash of panic for the thing which the Duke believed
lay so deep in his heart no man could ever find it out and laugh at it
or make gay over the scented romance. Taterleg was still looking off in
a general direction that was westward, a little south of west.

"She's in Wyoming," said Taterleg; "a lady I used to rush out in Great
Bend, Kansas, a long time ago."

"Oh," said the Duke, relieved and interested. "How long ago was that?"

"Over four years," sighed Taterleg, as if it might have been a quarter
of a century.

"Not so very long, Taterleg."

"Yes, but a lot of fellers can court a girl in four years, Duke."

The Duke thought it over a spell. "Yes, I reckon they can," he allowed.
"Don't she ever write to you?"

"I guess I'm more to blame than she is on that, Duke. She _did_ write,
but I was kind of sour and dropped her. It's hard to git away from,
though; it's a-comin' over me ag'in. I might 'a' been married and
settled down with that girl now, me and her a-runnin' a oyster parlor in
some good little railroad town, if it hadn't 'a' been for a Welshman
name of Elwood. He was a stonecutter, that Elwood feller was, Duke,
workin' on bridge 'butments on the Santa Fe. That feller told her I was
married and had four children; he come between us and bust us up."

"Wasn't he onery!" said the Duke, feelingly.

"I was chef in the hotel where that girl worked waitin' table, drawin'
down good money, and savin' it, too. But that derned Welshman got around
her and she growed cold. When she left Great Bend she went to Wyoming to
take a job--Lander was the town she wrote from, I can put my finger on
it in the map with my eyes shut. I met her when she was leavin' for the
depot, draggin'