"Sure it is," replied Curly, cheerfully, glad of assistance. "Do you reckon Dan Anderson would be gettin' anybody to write to you for him if he had even a piece of a arm left in the shop? I reckon not! He ain't that sort of a man."
Curly's sudden improvement gave him courage. "The fact is, ma'am," said he, "I got to break this thing to you kind of gentle. You know how that is yourself."
"I know all about it now," she said calmly. "I knew he would not come back—I saw it in his face. It was all because of that miserable railroad trouble that he went away—that he didn't ever come. It was all my own fault—my fault,—but I didn't mean it—I didn't—"
Curly, for the first time in his life, found himself engaged in an important emotional situation. He rose and gazed down at her with solemn pity written upon his countenance.
"Ma'am," he said, "I don't like to see you take on. I wish't you wouldn't. Why, I've seen men shot like Dan Anderson is, bullets clean through the middle of their body, and them out and frisky in less'n six weeks."
"He will live?"
"Oh, well," and Curly rubbed his chin in deliberation, "I can't say about that. He might live. You see, there ain't no doctor at Heart's Desire. The boys just took care of him the best they could. They brung him home from quite a ways off. They—they cut his arm off easy as they could, them not bein' reg'lar doctors. They—they sewed him up fine. He was shot some in the fight with the Kid's gang, out to the Piños Altos ranch. The sherf tole me hisself Dan was as game a man as ever throwed a leg over a saddle. When he got back from takin' the Kid up to Vegas, the sherf—that's Ben Stillson—he starts down to Cruces. Convention there this week, ma'am. Ben, he allowed he'd get Dan Anderson nomernated for Congress—that is, if he hadn't 'a' got killed."
"I knew he was a brave man," said the girl, quietly. "I've known that a long time."
"You didn't know any more'n us fellers knowed all along," said Curly. "There never was a squarer, nor a whiter, nor a gamer man stood on leather than him. He come out here to stay, and he's the sort that we all wouldn't let go of. Some of 'em goes back home. He didn't. What there was here he could have. For one while we thought he was throwin' us down in this railroad deal, but now we know he wasn't. We done elected him mayor, and right soon we're goin' to elect him something better'n that—if they ain't started it already over to Cruces—that is, I mean, if he ever gets well, which ain't likely—him bein' dead. Now I hate to talk this-a-way to you, ma'am; I ought to give you this letter. But I leave it to you if I ain't broke it as gentle as any feller could."
Curly saw the bowed head, and soared to still greater heights. "Ma'am," said he, "I don't see why you take on the way you do. We all know that you don't care a damn for Dan Anderson, or for Heart's Desire. Dan Anderson knowed that hisself, and has knowed it all along. You got no right to cry. You got no right to let on what you don't really feel. I won't stand for that a minute, ma'am. Now I'm—I'm plumb sincere and truthful. No frills goes." There was the solemnity of conscious virtue in his voice as he went on.