"A man couldn't sit around and eat out of a woman's hand in idleness and ever respect himself any more. My work's finished——"
"All I've got is yours—you saved it to me, you brought it home."
"The world expects a man that hasn't got anything to go out and make it before he turns around and looks—before he lets his tongue betray his heart and maybe be misunderstood by those he holds most dear."
"It's none of the world's business—there isn't any world but ours!"
"I thought with you gone away, Vesta, and the house dark nights, and me not hearing you around any more, it would be so lonesome and bleak here for an old half-invalid——"
"I wasn't going, I couldn't have been driven away! I'd have stayed as long as you stayed, till you found—till you knew! Oh, it will tear—tear—my heart—my heart out of—my breast—to see you go!"
Taterleg was singing his old-time steamboat song when Lambert went down to the bunkhouse an hour before sunset. There was an aroma of coffee mingling with the strain:
Oh, I bet my money on a bob-tailed hoss,
An' a hoo-dah, an' a hoo-dah;
I bet my money on a bob-tailed hoss,
An' a hoo-dah bet on the bay.
Lambert smiled, standing beside the door until Taterleg had finished. Taterleg came out with his few possessions in a bran sack, giving Lambert a questioning look up and down.