“You all know how when I wasn’t much over twenty I went West an’ put all the money I could rake an’ scrape into a ranch an’ cattle. Well, the place next to mine was owned by a young fellow—we’ll call him Jim Saunders, although that isn’t his name—who’d come out, like me, to make his fortune. We took to each other from the first, an’ pretty soon we were more like brothers than a good many of the real article I’ve seen since. After a while Jim told me he was goin’ to get married, an’ a few weeks later he brought home the prettiest little thing you’d see in a day’s ride. She had lots of yellow hair that was always tumblin’ down over her shoulders, an’ big blue eyes, an’ a voice like a wild bird, an’ Jim—well, he thought there wasn’t nobody like Milly in all the country.
“She seemed fond of him, too, at first, but it wasn’t long before I could see that it was a clear case of misfit all round. There was lots of excuse for her, for of course it was a hard life, an’ she loved finery an’ pretty things, an’ Jim didn’t have the money to give ’em to her, though he worked early an’ late, an’ did his level best to make somethin’ more than a livin’.
“Maybe it would have turned out all right in time if it hadn’t been that one day Jim went to the nearest town to buy some farmin’ implements, an’ fell in there with a fellow he used to know back East, and nothin’ would do him but he must go home with Jim to see how he was fixed. Well, he come, an’ it was a black day for Jim when he set foot on his threshold, for from the minute he saw Milly he hadn’t eyes for nothin’ else, and she bein’ a woman, was mightily set up to think a city man would set such store by her.
“He made himself so pleasant an’ so much at home that they begged him to stay all night, an’ long about twelve o’clock he was, or pretended to be, took awful sick. They worked with him till he got better, and wouldn’t hear of his tryin’ to go away next mornin’; so he stayed on, setting on the big rockin’-chair with a pillow behind him an’ talkin’ to Milly while Jim was off at work. He didn’t seem in no particular hurry about goin’, but Jim never ’spicioned for a minute that anything was wrong, for he liked the fellow first-rate, an’ would no more have thought of doubtin’ Milly than he would the Lord that made him.
“One evenin’ he came in late, tired an’ hungry, an’ foun’ that his wife—his wife that he loved—had left him and gone away with that devil that he thought was his friend! He went wild for a while. It seemed to him like everything was black around him, an’ there was great splotches of blood before his eyes, an’ he could hear voices that kept a-laughin’ at him an’ callin’ him a fool, an’ the only thing he held fast to was that he must follow ’em to the world’s end and kill the man that had took away all he had. So he tracked ’em, now here, now there, but always they doubled on him, till at las’, when his money was gone, he lost ’em altogether.
“Then he came to himself a little, an’ sold his ranch an’ went back to his old home to wait—for he knowed somehow that one day, sooner or later, the Lord would give him his revenge. He worked while he waited, an’ made money an’ got well off, an’ nobody knew nothin’ ’bout his ever bein’ married, so he had somethin’ like peace. But he never forgot, an’, after a while, it seemed like he didn’t feel so hard toward Milly, for he remembered how young she was, an’ how foolish, an’ what a devil she had to deal with; an’ sometimes he could see her with the pretty color all gone from her cheeks, an’ the laugh from her voice, heartbroken an’ deserted.
“At last, twenty years afterward, when he was gettin’ on in life, his time came. He was ridin’ along, not thinkin’ about anything in particular, when he happened to look up, an’ there, comin’ toward him roun’ a bend in the road, an’ ridin’ on a big black horse, was the man he’d waited for all these years. They knowed each other the minute their eyes met, an’ the fellow got white as chalk an’ pulled his horse clean back on his haunches, tryin’ to turn roun’ an’ make a run for it, but it wasn’t no good, for Jim was off his horse in a minute an’ had him by the throat, an’ in less time than it takes to tell it, he had pulled him down, cursin’ an’ cuttin’ at him, to the ground. Then, holdin’ him there, with his knee on his breast an’ his knife at his throat, he says:
“‘Where’s Milly? Tell me, or I’ll cut your devilish heart out!’
“The fellow glared back at him like a rat in a trap, an’ seein’ death in his eyes, an’ knowing ’twas no use to lie, says:
“‘She’s dead; she got sick when we got to New York, an’ I left her, an’ she died in a week.’