"On cow-boy pay?" she said laughing. "On forty dollars a month? I spend more'n that on champagne. Here you Miss Jesse, who's payin' for this—you? Who keeps you, eh, Miss Prunes—and—prisms? Shamed of my bein' a lady, eh? I am a lady, too, and don't you forget it. And now, git out of my home."
I struck a match to the bo-kay of paper flowers, heaped on the hand-painted pictures, the paper fans, the rocker chairs, and slung the coal-oil lamp into the flames; then while she tore my shoulder with her teeth, I carried her to my tent "That's your home now," I said, "the home of an honest working-man," I said, "and if another tough defiles my home, I'll kill you."
The house-warming gathered the neighbors, but she had no use for neighbors. Only they seen the line I drew in the dust around that tent, the dead line. Afterward if any man came near that line, she'd scream.
But she'd taught me to drink, an' I drank, day after day, night after night, while she sat frightened in the tent, moaning when I came. Only when she was cured could I get work, not while I had to watch all day, all night. Only when she was cured could I get work, make good, an' keep my wife as women should be kept. And I—and I—why if I let myself get sober once I'd remember, and remember, and go mad.
She swore she loved me, she vowed that she'd repented, and I believed until she claimed religion. I'd seen her breed of religion. I'd rather have her atheist than shamming. She would keep straight, and be my faithful wife if I'd quit drinking, if I'd only take her away. But she'd married me for a joke, and false as a cracked bell she'd chime out lies and lies, knowing as I knew that if she'd ever been the thing she claimed, I'd come into her life too late. How could she be the mother of my children, when—I drank, and sold my ponies to buy liquor, for there was no way out.
And by the time I'd only Tiger left, one night came Bull to find me just as dusk was falling. He'd been away, I hadn't seen him for weeks, and when he came to me in the Roundup saloon, I seen how frightened he was of speaking to me. I was drunk, too, scarce knowing what he said, just telling him to shut up and have a drink. Polly's bin hurt? Well, that's all right—have rye—Polly's been shot? That's good, we'd all have drinks. Was she dead?
She was dead.
And I was sober then as I am now.
"Murdered?" I asked.
"Jesse, she shot herself."