“Yu’ve not ate especially hearty,” said Lin, resting his arms upon the table.

“I’m going,” asserted Lusk.  “Governor Barker may start out.  I’ve got my interests to look after.”

“Why, sure,” said Lin.  “I can’t hope you’ll waste all your time on just me.”

Lusk rose and looked at his wife.  “It’ll be ten now before we get to Drybone,” said he.  And he went down to the stable.

The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread.  “I know you seen me,” she said, without looking at him.

“Saw you when?”

“I knowed it.  And I seen how you looked at me.”  She sat twisting and pressing the crumb.  Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now and then she flattened it to a disk.  Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing that he wished to reply.

“If you claim that pistol is yourn,” she said next, “I’ll tell you I know better.  If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not have to guess the name.  She has talked to me, and me to her.”

She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could have seen that McLean’s hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on his arms.

“Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!” The woman uttered another sudden laugh.  “I knowed about her—­all.  Things get heard of in this world.  Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own good time, and it done and gone how many years?  My, my, my!” Her voice grew slow and absent.  She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly resumed:  “It had travelled around about you and her like it always will travel.  It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she would have you, and then told you she would not when she learned about you and me.  Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their lives had to have their word about her facing you down you had another wife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him livin’ the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could not have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to no hinderance.  Folks said it was plain she did not want yus.  It give me a queer feelin’ to see that girl.  It give me a wish to tell her to her face that she did not love yus and did not know love.  Wait—­wait, Lin!  Yu’ never hit me yet.”

“No,” said the cow-puncher.  “Nor now.  I’m not Lusk.”

“Yu’ looked so—­so bad, Lin.  I never seen yu’ look so bad in old days.  Wait, now, and I must tell it.  I wished to laugh in her face and say, ‘What do you know about love?’ So I walked in.  Lin, she does love yus!”

“Yes,” breathed McLean.

“She was sittin’ back in her room at Separ.  Not the ticket-office, but—­”

“I know,” the cow-puncher said.  His eyes were burning.

“It’s snug, the way she has it.  ‘Good-afternoon,’ I says.  ’Is this Miss Jessamine Buckner?’”

At his sweetheart’s name the glow in Lin’s eyes seemed to quiver to a flash.