But this was by no means all that was to come. He harked back to that notion of a prisoner helping to make it easy for his executioner. “Easy plumb to the end,” he pursued, his mind reviewing the acts of the morning. “Why, he tried to give me your newspaper. I didn't—”
“Oh, no,” I said hastily. “I had finished with it.”
“Well, he took dying as naturally as he took living. Like a man should. Like I hope to.” Again he looked at the pictures in his mind. “No play-acting nor last words. He just told good-by to the boys as we led his horse under the limb—you needn't to look so dainty,” he broke off. “You ain't going to get any more shocking particulars.”
“I know I'm white-livered,” I said with a species of laugh. “I never crowd and stare when somebody is hurt in the street. I get away.”
He thought this over. “You don't mean all of that. You'd not have spoke just that way about crowding and staring if you thought well of them that stare. Staring ain't courage; it's trashy curiosity. Now you did not have this thing—”
He had stretched out his hand to point, but it fell, and his utterance stopped, and he jerked his horse to a stand. My nerves sprang like a wire at his suddenness, and I looked where he was looking. There were the cottonwoods, close in front of us. As we had travelled and talked we had forgotten them. Now they were looming within a hundred yards; and our trail lay straight through them.
“Let's go around them,” said the Virginian.
When we had come back from our circuit into the trail he continued: “You did not have that thing to do. But a man goes through with his responsibilities—and I reckon you could.”
“I hope so,” I answered. “How about Ed?”
“He was not a man, though we thought he was till this. Steve and I started punching cattle together at the Bordeaux outfit, north of Cheyenne. We did everything together in those days—work and play. Six years ago. Steve had many good points onced.”