“'You mean to tell me—' I began.
“'Never,' she said, and her eyes looked into mine with the straightness of truth. 'I had one husband, only—him I call the Ox; and I reckon he's still down in Juneau running the hash-joint. Look him up, if you ever get back, and you'll find he's rightly named.'
“And look him up I did, two years afterward. He was all she said—solid and stolid, the Ox—shuffling around and waiting on the tables.
“'You need a wife to help you,' I said.
“'I had one once,' was his answer.
“'Widower?'
“'Yep. She went loco. She always said the heat of the cooking would get her, and it did. Pulled a gun on me one day and ran away with some Siwashes in a canoe. Caught a blow up the coast and all hands drowned.'”
Trefethan devoted himself to his glass and remained silent.
“But the girl?” Milner reminded him.
“You left your story just as it was getting interesting, tender. Did it?”