“Yes. Mr. Masten had the right view. He refused to resort to the methods you used in bringing Pickett to account. He is too much a gentleman to act the savage.”
For an instant Randerson’s eyes lighted with a deep fire. And then he smiled mirthlessly.
“I reckon Mr. Masten ain’t never had anybody stir him up right proper,” he said mildly. “It takes different things to get a man riled so’s he’ll fight—or a woman, either. Either of ’em will fight when the right thing gets them roused. I expect that deep down in everybody is a little of that brute that you’re talkin’ about. I reckon you’d fight like a tiger, ma’am, if the time ever come when you had to.”
“I never expect to kill anybody,” she declared, coldly.
“You don’t know what you’ll do when the time comes, ma’am. You’ve been livin’ in a part of the country where things 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?