“You can’t save life without running some risk yourself, not as a rule, can you?” she said, shrinking from his familiarity.
“Not as a rule,” he replied. “You took on a bit of risk with me, you and your Piegan pony.”
“Oh, I was young,” she responded, leaning over the table, and drawing faces on a piece of paper before her. “I could take more risks, I was only nineteen!”
“I don’t catch on,” he rejoined. “If it’s sixteen or—”
“Or fifty,” she interposed.
“What difference does it make? If you’re done for, it’s the same at nineteen as fifty, and vicey-versey.”
“No, it’s not the same,” she answered. “You leave so much more that you want to keep, when you go at fifty.”
“Well, I dunno. I never thought of that.”
“There’s all that has belonged to you. You’ve been married, and have children, haven’t you?”
He started, frowned, then straightened himself. “I got one girl—she’s east with her grandmother,” he said jerkily.