wn on your knees and beg, if you want me to
talk!"

She sank to the floor of the wagon without a word.

He looked at her queerly as she knelt. There was intense gratification
in his voice, "You do want to know, when you'll swaller that."

"Yes, Pete," humbly, "I do."

His thin hands lay inert upon the soogan. His head turned weakly while
he kept his eyes upon her as though enjoying the situation to the
utmost. There was a silence in which he seemed both to be gathering
strength and considering how to begin.

"He's the kind of a feller--your Old Man--that don't have to holler his
head off to git himself heard. They'd listen in any man's country when
he talks. He don't talk much, but what he says goes--the kind that can
always finish what he starts.

"He's six feet, and there wasn't any man in the country could handle him
in those days. I've seen him throw a three-year-ol' steer like you'd
slap over a kid. He was easy and quiet, commonly, like one of them still
deep rivers that slip along peaceful till somethin' gits in its way. The
patientest feller I ever see with dumb brutes, and a patience that
wasn't hardly human, even with folks. But when he did break loose--well,
them that thought he was 'harmless' and went too far on account of it
never made the same mistake twice."

He continued with evident relish:

"That's where he fooled her--Isabelle--she didn't read him right. She
thought he was 'soft' because she had her way with him."

"They were married, Pete?"

"Married, right enough--he never thought any other way about her. She
was all-the-same angel to him," he grinned. "She never was straight--we
all knowed that but him, but she was slick, and she was swingin' her
throwrope for him in about a week after they brought her in from the
Middle West to teach the school in that district. Anybody that said a
word ag'in' her to him would have gone to the hospital. So he went ahead
and married her--while she laffed at him to his own hired men.

"If he'd worked her over with a quirt about onct a month, instead of
wonderin' what he could do for her next, he might have had her yet.

"If he made a door-mat out of hisself before, it was worse after you
come. He was the greatest hand for little things that ever I see--colts,
kittens, calves, puppies and a baby! He walked the floor carrying you on
a pillow for fear you'd break.

"It was too slow for Isabelle--that life--and only one man to fetch and
carry for her. We