Page:The Trail Rider (1924).pdf/270

 —how do you know I'm not planning to draw you into some fresh trouble?"

"I can't tell you just how I know, Fannie, but I know."

"Well, I am square with you. It came to me down there on Clear Creek that night that I had to be square; that it was the time set for me to part company with crooks. I'm through with them; they never brought me anything but trouble, anyhow."

"No, I don't reckon it pays out, Fannie."

"There's no use to tell you what my life's been, Texas—you know!"

"You pore little dove!"

He spoke with great tenderness, with boundless compassion; took her hand and stroked it, as if to console her for all that had been denied her in the parched ways that she had walked. Fannie bent her head to her updrawn knees and sobbed as if some great growth of sorrow had suddenly broken in her heart.

Her gust of weeping passed away slowly, only coming back now and then in diminishing force, like a bitter wind, making her voice shiver when she spoke.

"You're the only man that ever treated me like I was as good as other women," she said; "the only man I ever knew since I was a little girl, it seems