n the future--how they
would be very rich, and he would be a great man. "And this is where
blood tells," he said. "She was nothing but the love-child of some
young English lord, drifted out to our land with her servant-girl
mother. And she'd spent all her life in gambling hells among rogues,
but her soul was the daintiest lady angel that ever walked this earth,
though she could hardly read or write, and all the stars were her
friends, and even a rattlesnake wouldn't have wounded her." Mustn't she
have been a darling, Mamma? She had hair like gold, and little ears,
pink as sea shells, and big blue eyes and a flower for a mouth. No
wonder he loved her so. He said her baby was even more pleasure to her
than the pansy had been, and they both were "just kind of foolish over
it." Well, when Lola was about three months old a gang of desperadoes
came to the camp, and among them the man the Senator had wounded for
his wife. Before the Senator came in from the mine Hearts-ease heard
the other miners' wives talking of this, and how this man had boasted
he would kill him. She knew her husband was unarmed, having left his
gun behind him that day because his second one was broken, and he would
not leave her with none in the shack; quite unsuspiciously he returned
with his comrades, and went into a bar to have a drink on his way back,
as he often did to hear the news of the day. And when Hearts-ease could
not find him on the road, she ran down there, carrying the gun and the
baby, to warn him and give him his weapon, and got into the saloon just
as the desperado and his following entered by another door.

The enemy called out to the Senator that he meant to "do for him this
time," and as Hearts-ease rushed up to her husband with no fear for
herself, holding out the gun, the brute fired and shot her through the
heart, and she fell forward with Lola, dead in the Senator's arms. "And
then the heavens turned to blood," he said, "and I took the gun out of
her dead clasp and killed him like a dog." But by this time, Mamma, I
really was crying so I could hardly hear what he said. No wonder his
eyes have a sad look sometimes, or his hair is gray.

We neither of us spoke for a while. I could only press his strong kind
hand. Then he recovered his voice, and went on as if dreaming: "It all
came true what she prophesied. I am rich beyond her uttermost
fancyings, and I've sampled pretty well most all the world, but I've
always tried to do the thi