“Golden luck for her. I knew it was a chance in a million that she was still alive, but Harley wanted to take it. Say, that old fellow’s made of steel wire. Two of my boys are plugging along a mile or two behind us, but he stayed right with the game to a finish—and him seventy-three, mind you, and a New Yorker at that. The old boy rides like he was born in a saddle,” said Sam Yesler with enthusiasm.
“I never said he was a quitter,” conceded Ridgway ungraciously.
“You’re right he ain’t. And say, but he’s fond of his wife. Soon as he struck the ranch the old man butted out again into the blizzard to get her—slipped out before we knew it. The boys rounded him up wandering round the big pasture, and none too soon neither. All the time we had to keep herd on him to keep him from taking another whirl at it. He was like a crazy man to tackle it, though he must a-known it was suicide. Funny how a man takes a shine to a woman and thinks the sun rises and sets by her. Far, as I have been able to make out women are much of a sameness, though I ain’t setting up for a judge. Like as not this woman don’t care a hand’s turn for him.”
“Why should she? He bought her with his millions, I suppose. What right has an old man like that with one foot in the grave to pick out a child and marry her? I tell you, Sam, there’s something ghastly about it.”
“Oh, well, I reckon when she sold herself she knew what she was getting. It’s about an even thing—six of one and half a dozen of the other. There must be something rotten about a woman who will do a thing of that sort.”
“Wait till you’ve seen her before passing judgment. And after you have you’ll apologize if you’re a white man for thinking such a thing about her,” the miner said hotly.
Yesler looked at his friend in amiable surprise. “I don’t reckon we need to quarrel about Simon Harley’s matrimonial affairs, do we?” he laughed.
“Not unless you want to say any harm of that lamb.”
A glitter of mischief gleamed from the cattleman’s eyes. “Meaning Harley, Waring?”
“You know who I mean. I tell you she’s an angel from heaven, pure as the driven snow.”