“Such is Safety First:  never been known to take a chance yet.  Why, say, a year ago when he sold off his wool there was a piece in the county paper about him getting eighteen thousand dollars for it; so naturally there was a man that said he was a well-known capitalist come up from San Francisco to sell him some stock in a rubber company.  Safety admits he has the money and he goes down to the big city for a week at the capitalist’s expense, seeing the town’s night life and the blue-print maps and the engraved stock and samples of the rubber and the capitalist’s picture under a magnificent rubber tree in South America, and he’s lodged in a silk boudoir at the best hotel and wined and dined very deleteriously and everything is agreed to.  And the night before he’s going to put his eighteen thousand into this lovely rubber stock that will net him two hundred per cent, at the very lowest, on the capitalist’s word of honour, what does he do but sneak out and take the train for home on his return ticket that he’d made the capitalist buy him.

“Ever talk to one of these rich capitalists that has rubber stock for sale in South America or a self-starting banana orchard?  You know how good they are.

“You’re certainly entitled to anything of your own that you’ve kept after they get through with you.  And would you think that this poor, simple-minded old rancher would be any match for their wiles?  But if you knew he had been a match and had nicked ’em for at least three hundred dollars, would you still think something malignant might be put over on him by a mere scrub buckeroo named Sandy Sawtelle, that never made a cent in his life except by the most degrading manual labour?  No, you wouldn’t.  No fair-minded judge of criminals would.

“But I admit I had a weak moment.  Yes, sir; for a brief spell I was all too human.  Or I guess what it was.  I was all blinded up with immoral designs, this here snake-blooded Timmins having put things over on me in stock deals from time to time till I’d got to lying awake nights thinking how I could make a believer of him.  I wanted him to know there is a God, even if it hadn’t ever seemed so to him.

“Of course I knew it would have to be some high-grade felony, he being proof against common depredations.  Well, then, along come this Sunday paper, with two whole pages telling about how the meat of the common whale will win the war, with a picture of a whale having dotted lines showing how to butcher it, and recipes for whale patties, and so forth.  And next comes the circus to Red Gap, with old Pete, the Indian, going down to it and getting crazy about elephants.  And so that was how it happened.”

The lady now knitted in silence, appearing to believe that all had been told.

I waited a decent interval, then said I was glad indeed to know how it had all happened; that it was a great help to know how it had happened, even if I must remain forever ignorant of what it was that had happened.  Of course I couldn’t expect to be told that.