Her laugh admitted his hit. “Well, I was thinking of Laska. I begin to think HER fair prince has come.”
“Meaning Yesler?”
“Yes. She hasn’t found it out herself yet. She only knows she is tremendously interested.”
“He’s a prince all right, though he isn’t quite a fairy. The woman that gets him will be lucky.
“The man that gets Laska will be more than lucky,” she protested loyally.
“I dare say,” he agreed carelessly. “But, then, good women are not so rare as good men. There are still enough of them left to save the world. But when it comes to men like Sam—well, it would take a Diogenes to find another.”
“I don’t see how even Mr. Pelton, angry as he was, dared shoot him.”
“He had been drinking hard for a week. That will explain anything when you add it to his temperament. I never liked the fellow.”
“I suppose that is why you saved his life when the miners took him and were going to lynch him?”
“I would not have lifted a hand for him. That’s the bald truth. But I couldn’t let the boys spoil the moral effect of their victory by so gross a mistake. It would have been playing right into Harley’s hands.”