Jane looked modest and smiled, but she was too full of her troubles now for compliments, though she had a woman's love for them.
"I saw the sucker was fanning and I--well, Curly comes up just then and he goes off his nut and he--gives me a beating--in the street."
She saw that the circumstances altered the case in Gibbs's eyes, and she rather repented having told.
"He said he didn't want me working; he said he could support me."
Gibbs plainly thought well of Curly's wish to be the sole head and support of his nomadic family, but he recognized certain disadvantages in Curly's attitude when he said:
"You could get more than he could."
"Course, that's what I told him, but he said no, he wouldn't let me, and, Dan, you know what I did? Why, I helped him; he used to bust tags on the rattlers, and he hoisted express-wagons--I knew where to dispose of the stuff--furs and that sort, and we did do pretty well. I used to fill out for him, and then I'd go with him to the plant at night and wait with the drag holding the horses--God! I've sat out in the jungle when it was freezing, sat out for hours; sometimes the plant had been sprung by the bulls or the hoosiers; it made no difference--that's how I spent my nights for two winters. I know every road and every field and every fence corner around that town. It gave me the rheumatism, and I hurt my back helping him load the swag. You see he didn't have a gager and didn't have to bit up with any one, but he never appreciated that! And now he's lammed, he's pigged, that's what he's done; he's thrown me down--but you bet I'll have my hunk!"
"That won't get you anything," Gibbs argued. "Anyway," he added, as if he had suddenly discovered a solution, "why don't you go back on the gun now?"
She was silent a moment, and, as she sat there, the tears that were constantly filling her eyes welled up again, and she said, though reluctantly and with a kind of self-consciousness:
"I don't want to, Dan. I'm getting old. To tell the truth, since I've been out of it, I'm sick of the business--I--I've got a notion to square it."