"Curly," says he at last, "I've made my talk. If any man says I married Bonnie Bell for anything but love—the best and cleanest of love—he's making the cruelest mistake in the world; and he's a damned liar too. You ask her, Curly."
"What's that?" says I. "Me ask her? I didn't come for that. I couldn't look at her. That girl can get my goat any station. I don't want to talk to her."
"But you wouldn't of lynched a cow thief on the range in the old days on such a showing as this."
"Thief?" says I to him. "She said she was a thief—she'd stole the life and happiness of her pa and others——"
"That's true," says he quiet like. "When you think of it, all life is only a theft every way. Each human being steals from all others. That's the way the world goes on. The coming generation steals always from the one that has gone by. Tell me, is that wrong? And tell me, can you and I judge if it is?"
I set and thought for quite a while, trying to figure out things. I couldn't. At last I reached up and threw my gun away into the sage.
XXVII - How I Quit Old Man Wright
I went back to the railroad station as soon as a wagon come along that would give me a ride, about half a hour after I left the hired man in the buckboard. Then I went on up to Cody. When I got there I done what anybody who knows cowpunchers knows I'd do in them circumstances. I certainly did run true to form.
First, I went to the telegraph office and sent a telegram to Old Man Wright: "Don't do nothing till you hear from me." Next, I showed I was a good business man by going and buying a railroad ticket back to Chicago; and I left it and ten dollars with the clerk at the hotel.