“Bucky—­my friend—­in love with that woman, O’Doone’s wife,” resumed Brokaw.  “Dead crazy, Mac.  Crazier’n you were over the Breed’s woman, only he didn’t have the nerve.  Just moped around—­waiting—­keeping out of O’Doone’s way.  Trapper, O’Doone was—­or a Company runner.  Forgot which.  Anyway he went on a long trip, in winter, and got laid up with a broken leg long way from home.  Wife and baby alone, an’ Bucky sneaked up one day and found the woman sick with fever.  Out of her head!  Dead out, Bucky says—­an’ my Gawd!  If she didn’t think he was her husband come back!  That easy, Mac—­an’ he lacked the nerve!  Crazy in love with her, he was, an’ didn’t dare play the part.  Told me it was conscience.  Bah! it wasn’t.  He was afraid.  Scared.  A fool.  Then he said the fever must have touched him.  Ho, ho! it was funny.  He was a scared fool.  Wish I’d been there, Mac; wish I had!”

His eyes half closed, gleaming in narrow, shining slits.  His chin dropped on his chest.  David prodded him on.

“Bucky got her to run away with him,” continued Brokaw.  “Her and the kid, while she was still out of her head.  Bucky even got her to write a note, he said, telling O’Doone she was sick of him an’ was running away with another man.  Bucky didn’t give his own name, of course.  An’ the woman didn’t know what she was doing.  They started west with the kid, and all the time Bucky was afraid!  He dragged the woman on a sledge, and snow covered their trail.  He hid in a cabin a hundred miles from O’Doone’s, an’ it was there the woman come to her senses.  Gawd! it must have been exciting!  Bucky says she was like a mad woman, and that she ran screeching out into the night, leaving the kid with him.  He followed but he couldn’t find her.  He waited, but she never came back.  A snow storm covered her trail.  Then Bucky says he went mad—­the fool!  He waited till spring, keeping that kid, and then he made up his mind to get it back to Papa O’Doone in some way.  He sneaked back where the cabin had been, and found nothing but char there.  It had been burned.  Oh, the devil, but it was funny!  And after all this trouble he hadn’t dared to take O’Doone’s place with the woman.  Conscience?  Bah!  He was a fool.  You don’t get a pretty woman like that very often, eh, Mac?” Unsteadily he tilted the flask to turn himself out another drink.  His voice was thickening.  David rejoiced when he saw that the flask was empty.

“Dam’!” said Brokaw, shaking it.

“Go on,” insisted David.  “You haven’t told me how you came by the girl, Brokaw?”

The watery film was growing thicker over Brokaw’s eyes.  He brought himself back to his story with an apparent effort.