“She is, that.  I’ve loved her for a long time—­since way back in my college days—­but she wouldn’t have me.”

“You hadn’t earnt her.  Life’s like that—­it’s ups an’ downs.  But, in the long run, a man gets about what’s comin’ to him.  It’s like poker—­in the long run the best player is bound to win.  There’s times when luck is against him, maybe for months at a stretch.  He’ll lose every time he plays, but if he stays with it, an’ keeps on playin’ the best he knows how, an’ don’t go tryin’ to force his luck by drawin’ four cards, an’ fillin’ three-card flushes, why, some day luck will change an’ he wins back all he’s lost an’ a lot more with it, because there’s always someone in the game that’s throwin’ their money away drawin’ to a Judson.”

“What is a Judson?”

“Bill Judson was a major, an’ next to playin’ poker, he liked other things.  Every time he’d get three cards of a suit in a row, he’d draw to ’em, hopin’ for a straight flush.  That hope cost him, I reckon, hundreds of dollars, an’ at last he filled one—­but, hell!  Everyone laid down, an’ he gathered the ante.”  The Texan rolled another cigarette.  “An’ that’s the way it is with me—­I tried to force my luck.  I might as well own up to it right here an’ get it over with.  You’ve be’n square, straight through, an’ I haven’t.  I was stringin’ you with all that bunk about politics, an’ you bein’ sure to get hung for shootin’ Purdy.  Fact is, the grand jury would have turned you loose as soon as your case come up.  But, from the first minute I laid eyes on that girl, I wanted her.  I’m bad enough, but not like Purdy.  I figured if she’d go half-way, I’d go the other half.  So I planned the raid on the wool-warehouse, an’ the fake lynchin’, purpose to get her out of town.  I didn’t care a damn about you—­you was just an excuse to get her away.  I figured on losing you after we hit the mountains.  The first jolt I got was in the warehouse, when we didn’t have to drag you out.  Then I got another hell of a one in the coulee under the cottonwoods.  Then they got to comin’ so thick I lost track of ’em.  An’ the first thing I knew I would have killed any man that would look crossways at her.  It come over me all of a sudden that I loved her.  I tried to get out of it, but I was hooked.  I watched close, an’ I saw that she liked me—­maybe not altogether for what she thought I’d done for you.  But you was in the road.  I knew she liked you, too, though she wouldn’t show it.  ’Everything’s fair in love or war,’ I kept sayin’ over an’ over to myself when I’d lay thinkin’ it over of nights.  But, I knew it was a damned lie when I was sayin’ it.  If you’d be’n milk-gutted, an’ louse-hearted, like pilgrims are supposed to be, there’d be’n a different story to tell, because you wouldn’t have be’n fit for her.  But I liked you most as hard as I loved her.  ‘From now on it’s a square game,’ I says, so I made Old Man Johnson cough up that outfit of raiment, an’