Shock smiled and then grew serious.
"No," he said, "I've got to live only once, and nothing else seemed good enough for a fellow's life."
"What, preachin'?"
"No. Stopping men from sliding over the precipice and helping them back. The fact is," and, Shock looked over the cayuse's back into Bill's eyes, "every man should take a hand at that. There's a lot of satisfaction in it."
"Well, stranger," replied Bill, leading the way to the stable, "I guess you're pretty near right, though it's queer to hear me say it. There aint much in anything, anyway. When your horse is away at the front leadin' the bunch and everybody yellin' for you, you're happy, but when some other fellow's horse makes the runnin' and the crowd gets a-yellin' for him, then you're sick. Pretty soon you git so you don't care."
"'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,'" quoted Shock. "Solomon says you're right."
"Solomon, eh? Well, by all accounts he hit quite a gait, too. Had them all lookin' dizzy, I reckon. Come on in. I'll have dinner in a shake."
Fried pork and flapjacks, done brown in the gravy, with black molasses poured over all, and black tea strong enough to float a man-of-war, all this with a condiment of twenty miles of foot-hill breezes, makes a dinner such as no king ever enjoyed. Shock's delight in his eating was so obvious that Bill's heart warmed towards him. No finer compliment can be paid a cook than to eat freely and with relish of his cooking. Before the meal was over the men had so far broken through the barriers of reserve as to venture mutual confidences about the past. After Shock had told the uneventful story of his life, in which his mother, of course, was the central figure, Bill sat a few moments in silence, and then began: "Well, I never knew my mother. My father was a devil, so I guess I came naturally by all the devilment in me, and that's a few. But"—and here Bill paused for some little time—"but I had a sweetheart once, over forty years ago now, down in Kansas, and she was all right, you bet. Why, sir, she was—oh! well, 'taint no use talkin', but I went to church for the year I knowed her more'n all the rest of my life put together, and was shapin' out for a different line of conduct until—" Shock waited in silence. "After she died I didn't seem to care. I went out to California, knocked about, and then to the devil generally." Shock's eyes began to shine.
"I know," he said, "you had no one else to look after—to think of."
"None that I cared a blank for. Beg pardon. So I drifted round, dug for gold a little, ranched a little, Just like now, gambled a little, sold whisky a little, nothing very much. Didn't seem to care much, and don't yet."