s. I believe that I accused you before of being a
Yankee." And I read sarcasm in her words.

Her voice had a quality of definite estimation which nettled, humbled, and
isolated me, as if I lacked in some essential to a standard set.

"So you are going home, are you?" she resumed. "With the clothes on your
back, or will you stop at Benton for your trunk?"

"With the clothes on my back," I asserted bitterly. "I've no desire to see
Benton. The trunk can be shipped to me."

She said on, in her cool impersonal tone.

"That is the easiest way. You will live warm and comfortably. You will
need to wear no belt weapon. The police will protect you. If a man injures
you, you can summon him at law and wash your hands of him. Instead of
staking on your luck among new people, you can enter into business among
your friends and win from them. You can marry the girl next door--or even
take the chance of the one across the street, her parentage being comme il
faut. You can tell stories of your trip into the Far West; your children
will love to hear of the rough mule-whacker trail--yes, you will have
great tales but you will not mention that you killed a man who tried to
kill you and then rode for a night with a strange woman alone at your
stirrup. Perhaps you will venture to revisit these parts by steam train,
and from the windows of your coach point out the places where you suffered
those hardships and adventures from which you escaped by leaving them
altogether. Your course is the safe course. By all means take it, Mr.
Beeson, and have your trunk follow you."

"That I shall do, madam," I retorted. "The West and I have not agreed;
and, I fear, never shall."

"By honest confession, it has bested you; and in short order."

"In short order, since you put it that way. Only a fool doesn't know when
to quit."

"The greatest fool is the one who fools himself, in the quitting as in
other matters. But you will have no regrets--except about Daniel,
possibly."

"None whatever, save the regret that I ever tried this country. I wish to
God I had never seen it--I did not conceive that I should have to take a
human life--should be forced to that--become like an outlaw in the night,
riding for refuge----" And I choked passionately.

"You deserve much sympathy," she remarked, in that even tone.

I lapsed into a turbulence of voiceless rage at myself, at her, at
Daniel's treachery, at all the train, at Benton, and again at this damning
pred