, took up the tale
of those seconds and would count them slowly--fifty, fifty-one,
fifty-two, fifty-three--and on and on, waiting for the next speech, or
for the next popping of the wood upon the hearth, or for the next wail
of the wind that would break upon the deadly expectancy of that count.
And while they counted each looked straight before him with wide and
widening eyes.

Into one of these pauses the voice of Buck Daniels broke at length; and
it was a cheerless and lonely voice in that large room, in the dull
darkness, and the duller lights.

"D'you remember Shorty Martin, Kate?"

"I remember him."

He turned in his chair and hitched it a little closer to her until he
could make put her face, dimly, among the shadows. The flames jumped on
the hearth, and he saw a picture that knocked at his heart.

"The little bow-legged feller, I mean."

"Yes, I remember him very well."

Once more the flames sputtered and he saw how she looked wistfully
before her and above. She had never seemed so lovely to Buck Daniels.
She was pale, indeed, but there was no ugly pinching of her face, and if
there were shadows beneath her eyes, they only served to make her eyes
seem marvelously large and bright. She was pallid, and the firelight
stained her skin with touches of tropic gold, and cast a halo of the
golden hair about her face. She seemed like one of those statues wrought
in the glory and the rich days of Athens in ivory and in gold--some
goddess who has heard the tidings of the coming fall, the change of the
old order, and sits passive in her throne waiting the doom from which
there is no escape. Something of this filtered through to the sad heart
of Buck Daniels. He, too, had no hope--nay, he had not even her small
hope, but somehow he was able to pity her and cherish the picture of her
in that gloomy place. It seemed to Buck Daniels that he would give ten
years from the best of his life to see her smile as he had once seen her
in those old, bright days. He went on with his tale.

"You would have busted laughin' if you'd seen him at the Circle Y Bar
roundup the way I seen him. Shorty ain't so bad with a rope. He's always
talkin' about what he can do and how he can daub a rope on anything
that's got horns. He ain't so bad, but then he ain't so good, either.
Specially, he ain't so good at ridin'--you know what bowed legs he's
got, Kate?"

"I remember, Buck."

She was looking at him, at last, and he talked eagerly to tu