He pulled his whiskers, and grinned.
“Dunno jest how fur you’re elected. Looks like there was something between you and her—though I don’t say for shore. But she’s your kind; she may be a leetle devil, but she’s your kind—been eddicated and acts the lady. She ain’t our kind. Thunderation! What’d we do with her? She’d be better off marryin’ Dan’l. He’d give her a home. If you hadn’t been with this train I don’t believe she’d have follered in. That’s the proposition. You got to fight him anyway; he’s set out to back you down. It’s your fracas, isn’t it?”
“I know it,” I admitted. “He’s been ugly toward me from the first, without reason.”
“Reckoned to amuse himself. He’s one o’ them fellers that think to show off by ridin’ somebody they think they can ride. The boys hate to see you lay down to that; for you’d better call him and eat lead or else quit the country. So you might as well give him a full dose and take the pot.” 231
“What pot?”
“The woman, o’ course.”
“I tell you, Mrs. Montoyo has nothing to do with it, any more than any woman. It’s a matter between him and me—he began it by jeering at me before she appeared. I want her left out of it.”
“Oh, pshaw!” Jenks scoffed. “That can’t be did. He’s fetched her into it. What do you aim to do, then? Dodge her? When you’re dodgin’ her you’re dodgin’ him, or so he’ll take it.”
“I’ll not dodge him, you can bet on that,” I vowed. “I don’t seek her, nor him; but I shall not go out of my way to avoid either of them.”
“And when you give him his dose, what’ll you do?”