“I’ve heard the same, and I’d like to know the truth. Now, I get right down to why I sent fer you. By offerin’ to go in with Buffalo Bill and Matt Shepard, you’ve showed that you’re a good deal of a fool. I’m speakin’ straight, you see. What can they offer you? And what have you got in common with them, anyhow? Your kind is the kind that hangs out at the Casino and round the wine rooms; not the law-and-order crowd. You know it.”
“Yes, I know that, though I’m ashamed of it.”
“Get over that!” he said roughly. “You’ll receive more kindness from your own crowd than you ever will from any other. Take it from me straight, that you will. So, in the end, you ain’t goin’ to gain anything by goin’ in with that crowd. Cut it out!”
She returned his steady look.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“That sounds more like it. In the first place, I want to say to you that you can’t stay round here and me not know everything you’re doin’; just recollect that, and it may be of help to you. I’ve got friends in plenty; men you wouldn’t think of, too. When that law-and-order crowd gets through with you, and that will be just as soon as they ain’t got no further use for you, you’ll get no favors from them; you ought to know that. With your own crowd you can always have friends and help when you want it. I know what’s troublin’ you. You think you want to got even with Benson and Juniper Joe. Now, let me tell you that you don’t. You’d better forgit that old jealousy quarrel and let it go.”
But he saw her eyes blaze when he said it.
“You won’t?” he asked.
“Not until both of them are back in jail or hung for it,” she told him, her voice tense with sudden emotion.