"That's right, Bill; I was riding for a fall—going to hell fast." And he watched the smoke of his cigarette and saw in it those evil days. "I didn't belong and I couldn't fit in. It was all wrong. I was all wrong. I knew it, felt it, but couldn't somehow change it. It was the West in me, I fancy—in my blood." Then he turned to the big fellow and said with a smile that won the people who could inspire it: "But I've been a pretty good boy since I've been out here, haven't I, Bill?"
The other looked at him with an affection that was unmistakable.
"Well, say, since you been out here you've made everything that wears a hat take it off to you."
"Then why in blazes are you giving me the spur?"
"Wah-na-gi—that's the answer. Now wait. I got to git this out of my system. Hal, son, don't you go to makin' no such mistake as your dad made."
"And don't you forget, Bill," said Hal stiffly, "that I had a mother as well as a father—a mother I have no reason to regard as a mistake."
It was Bill's turn to look off into the mountains, to go back into the past.
"Say," he said softly, "she was all right. Nat-u-ritch was sure all right. She didn't know anything but bein' a wife and bein' a mother, and that's pretty good, I guess. I suppose you know why she killed herself? Couldn't understand why her kid should be sent away to England. She was a thoroughbred in a way, but, son, it was an Injin way."
"I fancy that was what was the matter with me in London, Bill. My way was an Indian way."
"Well," said the cattle-boss, seeing that he was being diverted from his text, "Don't walk into trouble with your eyes wide open."