“He will live?”

“Oh, well,” and Curly rubbed his chin in deliberation, “I can’t say about that.  He might live.  You see, there ain’t no doctor at Heart’s Desire.  The boys just took care of him the best they could.  They brung him home from quite a ways off.  They—­they cut his arm off easy as they could, them not bein’ reg’lar doctors.  They—­they sewed him up fine.  He was shot some in the fight with the Kid’s gang, out to the Pinos Altos ranch.  The sherf tole me hisself Dan was as game a man as ever throwed a leg over a saddle.  When he got back from takin’ the Kid up to Vegas, the sherf—­that’s Ben Stillson—­he starts down to Cruces.  Convention there this week, ma’am.  Ben, he allowed he’d get Dan Anderson nomernated for Congress—­that is, if he hadn’t ‘a’ got killed.”

“I knew he was a brave man,” said the girl, quietly.  “I’ve known that a long time.”

“You didn’t know any more’n us fellers knowed all along,” said Curly.  “There never was a squarer, nor a whiter, nor a gamer man stood on leather than him.  He come out here to stay, and he’s the sort that we all wouldn’t let go of.  Some of ’em goes back home.  He didn’t.  What there was here he could have.  For one while we thought he was throwin’ us down in this railroad deal, but now we know he wasn’t.  We done elected him mayor, and right soon we’re goin’ to elect him something better’n that—­if they ain’t started it already over to Cruces—­that is, I mean, if he ever gets well, which ain’t likely—­him bein’ dead.  Now I hate to talk this-a-way to you, ma’am; I ought to give you this letter.  But I leave it to you if I ain’t broke it as gentle as any feller could.”

Curly saw the bowed head, and soared to still greater heights.  “Ma’am,” said he, “I don’t see why you take on the way you do.  We all know that you don’t care a damn for Dan Anderson, or for Heart’s Desire.  Dan Anderson knowed that hisself, and has knowed it all along. You got no right to cry.  You got no right to let on what you don’t really feel.  I won’t stand for that a minute, ma’am.  Now I’m—­I’m plumb sincere and truthful.  No frills goes.”  There was the solemnity of conscious virtue in his voice as he went on.

“I’m this much of a mind-reader, ma’am,” said he, “that I know you don’t care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson.  That’s everdent.  I ain’t in on that side of the play.  I’m just here to say that, so far as he’s concerned hisself, he’d ‘a’ laid down and died cheerful any minute of his life for you.”

She flung upward a tearful face to look at him once more.

“He just worships the place where your shadow used to fall at, that’s all,” said Curly, firmly.  “He don’t talk of nothing else but you, ma’am.”

“How dare he talk of me!” she flashed.

“Oh, that is—­well, that is, he don’t talk so blamed much, after all,” stammered Curly.  “Leastwise, not none now.  He’s out of his head most of the time, now.”