Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/73

 understand, perhaps it was only wild, unreasoning, frantic passion. I don't know. I only know she called him—a murderer. She couldn't have loved him, you say. Perhaps no, perhaps yes. Does it make any difference? Breen thought she did, and Breen loved her. I don't know. I only know that where he looked for a ray of mercy, her mercy, to light the blackened depths, for the touch, her touch, that would have held him back from the brink, for the word of comfort, her word, that would have bid him stand like a gallant soldier facing untold odds, he received, instead, a condemnation more terrible than any that had gone before, and a bleeding heart dried bitter as gall, a patient, grief-stricken man became a vicious snapping wolf, and "Angel" Breen—a devil.

Would I have been a stronger man than Breen? Would you? Would I have done differently than Kitty Mooney did if I had been in her place? Would you? We don't know, do we? No one knows. God keep us from ever knowing. The poor devil in the gutters, the wretched, ruined lives of women who have lost their grip and drunk the dregs, the human, stranded, battered wrecks we see around us, were once like you and me. We don't know, do we? God pity them! God keep us from the sneer! Our strength has never been measured. It may be no greater than theirs. To-morrow it may be you or I.

It was pretty lawless out here in those days. We had the riff-raff of the East, and worse; and there was nothing to restrain them, nothing much to keep them in check, and they did about as they liked. They