ings are done accordin' to hard
an' fast rules. Out here things run loose, an' if you stay here long
enough some day you'll meet them an' recognize them for your own--an'
you'll wonder how you ever got along without them." He looked at her now
with a subtle grin. But his words were direct enough, and his voice rang
earnestly as he went on: "Why, I reckon you've never been tuned up to
nature, ma'am. Have you ever hated anybody real venomous?"

"I have been taught differently," she shot back at him. "I have never
hated anybody."

"Then you ain't never loved anybody, ma'am. You'd be jealous of the one
you loved, an' you'd hate anybody you saw makin' eyes at them."

"Well, of all the odd ideas!" she said. She was so astonished at the turn
his talk had taken that she halted her pony and faced him, her cheeks
coloring.

"I don't reckon it's any odd idea, ma'am. Unless human nature is an odd
idea, an' I reckon it's about the oldest thing in the world, next to love
an' hate." He grinned at her unblushingly, and leaned against the saddle
horn.

"I reckon you ain't been a heap observin', ma'am," he said frankly, but
very respectfully. "You'd have seen that odd idea worked out many times,
if you was. With animals an' men it's the same. A kid--which you won't
claim don't love its mother--is jealous of a brother or a sister which it
thinks is bein' favored more than him, an' if the mother don't show that
she's pretty square in dealin' with the two, there's bound to be hate
born right there. What do you reckon made Cain kill his brother, Abel?

"Take a woman--a wife. Some box-heads, when their wife falls in love with
another man, give her up like they was takin' off an old shoe, sayin'
they love her so much that they want to see her happy--which she can't
be, she says, unless she gets the other man. But don't you go to
believin' that kind of fairy romance, ma'am. When a man is so willin' to
give up his wife to another man he's sure got a heap tired of her an'
don't want her any more. He's got his eye peeled for Number Two, an' he's
thankin' his wife's lover for makin' the trail clear for the matrimonial
wagon. But givin' up Number One to the other man gives him a chance to
pose a lot, an' mebbe it's got a heap of effect on Number Two, who sort
of thinks that if she gets tied up to such a sucker she'll be able to
wrap him around her finger. But if he loves Number Two, he'll be mighty
grumpy to the next fellow that goes to makin'