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 shaled for review under his eyes like phantoms in a crystal.

"Funny about that divorce book, too," he said, looking up quickly. "I'd been studyin' up on that book like a lawyer, thinkin' it was goin' to be the wedge I'd use one of these days to split me off from the old lady, but it works around the other way on in the end. It made me solid with her by savin' my life. If I'd 'a' been killed this morning, Rawlins, I believe she'd 'a' kicked me into my grave like a cat."

Rawlins shook his head in forceful denial, although he felt that Peck was not so very far off the truth, hollow instrument of understanding that he was.

"I think you've got her sized up wrong, Peck."

"No, I ain't," Peck declared hotly. "You never had her grab her hands in your moustache and try to bat your brains out agin a rock. But I'll forgive her for all her rough work and raw deals if she'll show me she's reformed enough to hand over a bale of that long-green. If she ain't, my first plan goes through. I'll sell them sheep and hit the breeze back to St. Joe. She's got to show me; she's got to hunt Riley up and give him back his job. If it hadn't been for Riley lendin' me that divorce book where'd I 'a' been right now? She'd 'a' been plantin' toadstools on my grave."

Peck went off to attend his sheep after dinner, his gun against his leg, no more troubled over having killed a man than if he had been doing that sort of thing right along. He seemed to take so much satisfaction out of the event, and enlarge himseif to such overspreading importance, that Rawlins wondered whether he was in the way of becoming a killer, as he had heard