"You do not like him?"
"Who says I don't?"
"You do! Your eyes flash hate while you speak of him."
"Do they? Well, maybe I don't like him as well as I do a glass of brandy–maybe I have lost some one I loved by his hand. It isn't at all unlikely."
The traveler sighed, and with an anxious look, said:
"You don't bear him any grudge, do you? You wouldn't harm him?"
A strange look passes like a flash over the face of the other: he seemed to read the thoughts or wishes of the traveler in a glance.
"Oh, no," he said, with assumed carelessness. "Accidents will happen in the best families. It's not in me to bear a grudge, because Bill may have wiped out fifteen or twenty Texans, while they were foolin' around in his way. As to harm–he's too ready with his six-shooter, old Truth-Teller, he calls it, to stand in much danger. I'm quick, but he is quicker. You take a good deal of interest in him? Do you know him?"
"Yes; that is, I know him by sight. He is thought a great deal of by an intimate friend of mine, and that is why I feel an interest in him."
"And that friend is a woman?"