you saw how neighborly he talked to the other boys."

"Where have they all gone?" I asked.

He smiled at me. "It cert'nly is lonesome now, for a fact."

"I didn't know you felt it," said I.

"Feel it!--they've went to the railroad. Three of them are witnesses
in a case at Evanston, and the Judge wants our outfit at Medicine Bow.
Steve shunned me. Did he think I was going back on him?"

"What if he did? You were not. And so nobody's going to Wind River but
you?"

"No. Did you notice Steve would not give us any information about
Shorty? That was right. I would have acted that way, too." Thus, each
time, he brought me back to the subject.

The sun was now shining warm during two or three minutes together, and
gulfs of blue opened in the great white clouds. These moved and met
among each other, and parted, like hands spread out, slowly weaving
a spell of sleep over the day after the wakeful night storm. The
huge contours of the earth lay basking and drying, and not one living
creature, bird or beast, was in sight. Quiet was returning to my revived
spirits, but there was none for the Virginian. And as he reasoned
matters out aloud, his mood grew more overcast.

"You have a friend, and his ways are your ways. You travel together,
you spree together confidentially, and you suit each other down to the
ground. Then one day you find him putting his iron on another man's
calf. You tell him fair and square those ways have never been your ways
and ain't going to be your ways. Well, that does not change him any, for
it seems he's disturbed over getting rich quick and being a big man
in the Territory. And the years go on, until you are foreman of Judge
Henry's ranch and he--is dangling back in the cottonwoods. What can he
claim? Who made the choice? He cannot say, 'Here is my old friend that I
would have stood by.' Can he say that?"

"But he didn't say it," I protested.

"No. He shunned me."

"Listen," I said. "Suppose while you were on guard he had whispered,
'Get me off'--would you have done it?"

"No, sir!" said the Virginian, hotly.

"Then what do you want?" I asked. "What did you want?"

He could not answer me--but I had not answered him, I saw; so I pushed
it farther. "Did you want indorsement from the man you were hanging?
That's asking a little too much."

But he had now another confusion. "Steve stood by Shorty," he said
musingly. "It was Shorty's mistake cost him his life, but all the same
he didn't want u