“I don’t like to think of your killing off anybody.”
“Has to be done in war.”
“That is the truth, but I would rather some one else than my friends should do that part.”
“I thought you liked those fellows that used to go about slashin’ and killin’ right and left. From what I’ve read they used to be a pretty lively gang and didn’t have any special reason for their tempers sometimes.”
“Oh, but they did. They had to rescue lovely ladies.”
“Yes, and they had a way of ridin’ into town, like I would go into Denton and say, ‘If anybody in this town says Allie Ross ain’t a sight the best looking girl in the county I’ll put daylight through him.’ What would you think of my doing that, for instance? You’d call me some kind of fool, wouldn’t you?”
“Very likely I should. But they were not all that way. They went on quests and delivered prisoners from dungeons and slew wicked beasts and giants and things.”
“You think that’s a heap nicer than the way we-all do, don’t you?” said Neal with a smile and a side glance at her. “Ain’t any of us ever rescued our friends from the Injuns, and what worse beasts will you find than them? Ain’t any of this generation gone into mountain hiding-places after a gang of thieves? I call that just about as good as any of those book adventures.”
“But it doesn’t sound so romantic. You don’t do it for some fair lady’s sake who binds her colors on your shield and sends you forth. Perhaps if I didn’t know you all and if you were not named such plain names as Ira and Bud and Tom it wouldn’t seem so commonplace.”
“Maybe it doesn’t sound romantic, but if it was written up and somebody put in a lot about roses and posies and stuff they could make it sound pretty. Now there’s that about Iry and Lou; it strikes me that was pretty romantic, though they ain’t neither of them much for looks and they haven’t those sugar-plum names.”