It was a nice time that, as I sot there, seeing in fancy him kissin’ her sweet little face, and she hanging on him. If I was ’most mad afore, I was ten times worse now; and when I heer’d Hez comin’, I stood thereon a shelf of rock, where the track came along, meaning to put half a dozen plugs in him, and then pitch him over into the Gulch. But I was that mad, that when he came up cheery and singing, I forgot all about my shooting-iron and bowie, and went at him like a bar, hugging and wrastling him, till we fell together close to the edge of the Gulch, and I had only to give him a shove, and down he’ ha’ gone kelch on the hard rocks ninety foot below.
“Now, Hez,” I says; “how about your darling now? You’ll cut in afore a better man again, will yer?”
“Yes, if I live!” he says, stout-like, so as I couldn’t help liking the grit he showed. “That’s right,” he says; “pitch me over, and then go and tell little Jael what you’ve done. She’ll be fine and proud of yer then, Abinadab Scales!”
He said that as I’d got him hanging over the rocks, and he looked me full in the face, full of grit, though he was helpless as a babby; but I didn’t see his face then, for what I see was the face of Jael, wild and passionate-like, asking me what I’d done with her love, and my heart swelled so that I gave a sob like a woman, as I swung Hez round into safety, and taking his place like, “Shove me over,” I says, “and put me out of my misery.”
Poor old Hez! I hated him like pyson; but he wasn’t that sort. ’Stead of sending me over, now he had the chance, he claps his hand on my shoulder, and he says, says he, “Dab, old man,” he says, “give it a name, and let’s go and have a drink on this. We can’t all find the big nuggets, old hoss; and if I’m in luck, don’t be hard on yer mate.”
Then he held out his fist, but I couldn’t take it, but turning off, I ran hard down among the rocks till I dropped, bruised and bleeding, and didn’t go back to my tent that night.
I got a bit wild arter that. Hez and Jael were spliced up, and I allus kep away. When I wanted an ounce or two of gold, I worked, and when I’d got it, I used to drink—drink, because I wanted to drown all recollection of the past.
Hez used to come to me, but I warned him off. Last time he come across me, and tried to make friends, “Hez,” I says, “keep away—I’m desprit like—and I won’t say I shan’t plug yer!”
Then Jael came, and she began to talk to me about forgiving him; but it only made me more mad nor ever, and so I went and pitched at the lower end of the Gulch, and they lived at t’other.
Times and times I’ve felt as if I’d go and plug Hez on the quiet, but I never did, though I got to hate him more and more, and never half so much as I did nigh two years arter, when I came upon him one day sudden with his wife Jael, looking pootier than ever, with a little white-haired squealer on her arm. An’ it ryled me above a bit, to see him so smiling and happy, and me turned into a bloodshot, drinking, raving savage, that half the Gulch was feared on, and t’other half daren’t face.