“When I’ve settled with her father—and Jake.”
Arizona held out his horny, claw-like hand. “Shake,” he said. “I’m glad, real glad.”
They gripped for a moment, then the cowpuncher turned away, and sat staring out over the prairie. Tresler, watching him, wondered at that long abstraction. The man’s face had a softened look.
“We all fall victims to it sooner or later, Arizona,” he ventured presently. “It comes once in a man’s lifetime, and it comes for good or ill.”
“Twice—me.”
The hard fact nipped Tresler’s sentimental mood in the bud.
“Ah!”
The other continued his study of the sky-line. “Yup,” he said at last. “One died, an’ t’other didn’t hatch out.”
“I see.”