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 "Is there anyone that loves him, Gedge? Has he ever married?"

Gedge shook his head.

"Has he got a friend, any man who sticks up for him?" insisted Smith, as if he was anxious to be told that this was the case. I saw that Gedge followed the workings of the man's strange and overwrought mind, and he hesitated before he replied.

"I don't know everything about Hale," he said reluctantly, "and I don't want to do him no injustice. He may hev a friend somewhere."

"But you've never heard of one?" said the pioneer, with a sudden savage snap in his voice that made me wince. "I'm glad to hear that, Gedge, for if I'd heard that he had one solitary friend in the State of Texas, or in the whole United States, I'd have started for England by the next East-bound express."

He looked at me once more, and then turned to Gedge.

"This young man knows my story, Gedge?"

Keno nodded, and Smith nodded too, and was silent for quite a while. When he did