The smile slowly faded from Tucker’s face, that now looked quite rigid in the moonlight.  He put down his glass and walked to the window as Patterson gloomily continued:  “But that’s nothing to you.  You’ve got ahead of ’em both, and had your revenge by going off with the gal.  That’s what I said all along.  When folks—­specially women folks—­wondered how you could leave a woman like your wife, and go off with a scallawag like that gal, I allers said they’d find out there was a reason.  And when your wife came flaunting down here with Poindexter before she’d quite got quit of you, I reckon they began to see the whole little game.  No, sir!  I knew it wasn’t on account of the gal!  Why, when you came here to-night and told me quite nat’ral-like and easy how she went off in the ship, and then calmly ate your pie and drank your whiskey after it, I knew you didn’t care for her.  There’s my hand, Spence; you’re a trump, even if you are a little looney, eh?  Why, what’s up?”

Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson’s words seemed like a revelation that shocked him as profoundly as it might have shocked a nobler nature.  The simple vanity and selfishness that made him unable to conceive any higher reason for his wife’s loyalty than his own personal popularity and success, now that he no longer possessed that eclat, made him equally capable of the lowest suspicions.  He was a dishonored fugitive, broken in fortune and reputation—­why should she not desert him?  He had been unfaithful to her from wildness, from caprice, from the effect of those fascinating qualities; it seemed to him natural that she should be disloyal from more deliberate motives, and he hugged himself with that belief.  Yet there was enough doubt, enough of haunting suspicion, that he had lost or alienated a powerful affection, to make him thoroughly miserable.  He returned his friend’s grasp convulsively and buried his face upon his shoulder.  But he was above feeling a certain exultation in the effect of his misery upon the dog-like, unreasoning affection of Patterson, nor could he entirely refrain from slightly posing his affliction before that sympathetic but melancholy man.  Suddenly he raised his head, drew back, and thrust his hand into his bosom with a theatrical gesture.

“What’s to keep me from killing Poindexter in his tracks?” he said wildly.

“Nothin’ but his shooting first,” returned Patterson, with dismal practicality.  “He’s mighty quick, like all them army men.  It’s about even, I reckon, that he don’t get me first,” he added in an ominous voice.

“No!” returned Tucker, grasping his hand again.  “This is not your affair, Patterson; leave him to me when I come back.”

“If he ever gets the drop on me, I reckon he won’t wait,” continued Patterson lugubriously.  “He seems to object to my passin’ criticism on your wife, as if she was a queen or an angel.”

The blood came to Spencer’s cheek, and he turned uneasily to the window.  “It’s dark enough now for a start,” he said hurriedly, “and if I could get across the mountain without lying over at the summit, it would be a day gained.”