"There are a lot of better men than I am jest a-hone'in to marry you," he interrupted her to say.
"I don't want them—I don't want anybody but you, and now you go off and leave me——"
The situation was beyond any subtlety of the man, and he sat in silence while she wept. When he could command himself he said:
"I'm mighty sorry, Cory, but I reckon the best way out of it is to just take myself off in the hills where I can't interfere with any one's fun but my own. Seems to me I'm fated to make trouble all along the line, and I'm going to pull out where there's nobody but wolves and grizzlies, and fight it out with them."
She was filled with a new terror: "What do you mean? I don't believe you intend to come back at all!" She looked at him piteously, the tears on her cheeks.
"Oh, yes, I'll round the circle some time."
She flung herself down on the chair arm and sobbed unrestrainedly. "Don't go—please!"
Mose felt a sudden touch of the same disgust which came upon him in the presence of his father's enforcing affection. He arose. "Now, Cory, see here; don't you waste any time on me. I'm no good under the sun. I like you and I like Pinkie, but I don't want you to cry over me. I ain't worth it. Now that's the God's truth. I'm a black hoodoo, and you'll never prosper till I skip; I'm not fit to marry any woman."
Singularly enough, this gave the girl almost instant comfort, and she lifted her head and dried her eyes, and before he left she smiled a little, though her face was haggard and tear stained.
Mose was up early and had his packs ready and Kintuck saddled when Mrs. Reynolds called him to breakfast. Cora's pale face and piteous eyes moved him more deeply than her sobbing the night before, but there was a certain inexorable fixedness in his resolution, and he did not falter. At bottom the deciding cause was Mary. She had passed out of his life, but no other woman could take her place—therefore he was ready to cut loose from all things feminine.