"No; why should we? Different men have different ideas about those things. Seth can't see that because that gold was ours in the gang, he shouldn't steal it; that's one kind of man. I'm different."
"You mean that I'm like the gold?"
"Yes, I guess that's what I mean. You see, well—you know what I mean, Jeanette."
"But you like me?"
"So much that I want to keep you good enough to like."
"Would it be playing the game crooked, Bulldog, if you—if I kissed you?".
"Not wrong for you to do it, Jeanette, because you don't know how to do what I call wrong, but I'm afraid I couldn't square it with myself. Don't get this wrong, girl, it sounds a little too holy, put just that way. I've kissed many a fellow's girl, but I don't want to kiss you, being Seth's girl, and that isn't because of Seth, either. Can you untangle that—get what I mean?"
"I get it, Bulldog. You are some man, some man!"
There was a catch in the girl's voice; she took her hand from Carney's arm and drew the back of it irritably across her eyes; then she said in a steadier voice: "Good night, man—I'm going back." Together they felt their way along the cross-cut, and when they came to the main drift, Carney said: "I'm going out through the hotel, Jeanette, if there's nobody about; I want to get my horse from the stable. When we come to the cellar you go ahead and clear the way for me."
The passage from the drift through the cellar led up into a little store-room at the back of the hotel; and through this Carney passed out to the stable where he saddled his bucksin, transferring to his belt a gun that was in a pocket of the saddle. Then he fastened to the horn the two bags that had been on the pack mule. Leading the buckskin out he avoided the street, cut down the hillside, and skirted the turbulent Bucking Horse.