Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/275

 these cow-boozers on the start. And, Marion, I want to know whether you’ll give me another chance and go with me.”

Sinclair, on the bench and leaning against the tree, sat with folded arms looking at his wife. Marion in a hickory chair faced him.

“No one would like to see you be all you ought to be more than I, Murray; but you are the only one in the world that can ever give yourself another chance to be that.”

“The fellows in the saddle here now have denied me every chance to make a man of myself again on the railroad—you know that, Marion. In fact, they never did give me the show I was entitled to. I ought to have had Hailey’s place. Bucks never treated me right in that; he never pushed me in the way he pushed other men that were just as bad as I ever was. It discouraged me; that’s the reason I went to pieces.”

“It could be no reason for treating me as you treated me: for bringing drunken men and drunken women into our house, and driving me out of it unless I would be what you were and what they were.”

“I know I haven’t treated you right; I’ve treated you shamefully. I will do anything on earth you say to square it. I will! Recollect, I had lived among men and in the same country 251