“Then he rode off and left her and I stayed behind.  D’you think it’s been easy to stay here?  Man, man, I’ve had to hear her talkin’ about Dan Barry day after day, and never a word for me.  And I had to tell her stories about Dan and what he’d used to do, and she’ sit with her eyes miles away from me, listenin’ an smilin’ and me there hungerin’ for just one look out of her eyes—­hungerin’ like a dyin’ dog for water.  And then for her and Joe I rode down south and when I met Dan Barry d’you think they was any light in his eyes when he seen me?

“No, he’d forgotten me the way even a hoss won’t forget his master.  Forgot me after a few months—­and after all that’d gone between us!  Not even Kate—­even she was nothin’ to him.  But still I kept at it and I brought him back.  I had to hurt him to do it, but God knows it wasn’t out of spite that I hit him—­God knows!

“And when I seen Dan go into that burnin’ barn I says to myself:  ’Buck, if nothin’ is done that wall will fall and there’s the end of Dan Barry.  There’s the end of him, that ain’t any human use, and when he’s finished after a while maybe Kate will get to know that they’s other men in the world besides Dan.’  I says that to myself, deep and still inside me.  And then I looked at Kate standin’ in that white thing with her yaller hair all blowin’ about her face—­and I wanted her like a dyin’ man wants heaven!  But then I says to myself again:  ’No matter what’s happened, he’s been my friend.  He’s been my pal.  He’s been my bunkie.’

“Doc, you ain’t got a way of knowin’ what a partner is out here.  Maybe you sit in the desert about a thousand miles from nowhere, and across the little mesquite fire, there’s your pal, the only human thing in sight.  Maybe you go months seein’ only him.  If you’re sick he takes care of you.  If you’re blue he cheers you up.  And that’s what Dan Barry was to me.  So I stands sayin’ these things to myself, and I says:  ’If I keep that wall from fallin’ Dan’ll know about it, and they won’t be no more of that yaller light in his eyes when he looks at me.  That’s what I says to myself, poor fool!

“And I went into the fire and I fought to keep that wall from fallin’.  You know what happened.  When I come out, staggerin’ and blind and three parts dead, Dan Barry looks up to me and touches his face where I’d hit him, and the yaller comes up glimmerin’ and blazin’ in his eyes.  Then I went back to my room and I fought it out.

“And here’s where I stand now.  If I stay here, if I see that yaller light once more, they won’t be no waitin’.  Him and me’ll have to have it out right then.  Am I a dog, maybe, that I got to stand around and jump when he calls me?”

“My dear fellow—­my dear Mr. Daniels!” cried the horrified Doctor Byrne.  “Surely you’re wrong.  He wouldn’t go so far as to make a personal attack upon you!”