"It was wrong of me to draw you into it, Duke; I should have let you go your way."
"There's no regrets on my side, Vesta. I guess it was planned for me to come this far and stop."
"They'll never rest till they've drawn you into a quarrel that will give them an excuse for killing you, Duke. They're doubly sure to do it since you got away from them that night. I shouldn't have stopped you; I should have let you go on that day."
"I had to stop somewhere, Vesta," he laughed. "Anyway, I've found here what I started out to find. This was the end of my road."
"What you started to find, Duke?"
"A man-sized job, I guess." He laughed again, but with a colorless artificiality, sweating over the habit of solitude that leads a man into thinking aloud.
"You've found it, all right, Duke, and you're filling it. That's some satisfaction to you, I know. But it's a man-using job, a life-wasting job," she said sadly.
"I've only got myself to blame for anything that's happened to me here, Vesta. It's not the fault of the job."
"Well, if you'll stay with me till I sell the cattle, Duke, I'll think of you as the next best friend I ever had."
"I've got no intention of leaving you, Vesta."