deserted her and she's pursuing him and trailing him down to earth!"
Chuck Slithers, doubting Thomas of the outfit and student of Sherlock
Holmes, cunningly suggested. "I always imagined he was a varmint with a
past--a' ex-heart breaker of innocent women or a train-robber or--"

"Aw, hell," the Ramblin' Kid rebuked, "him have a wife? Don't insult th'
female population!"

"_Carramba!_" exclaimed Pedro Valencia, Mexican line-rider for the
Quarter Circle KT, "perhaps she will stick him with the dagger, or shoot
him with the gun when she arrive! The ladies with love kill quick when
the love is--what you call him?--the jilt?"

"And I'd almost forgot I ever had one!" Old Heck continued talking as if
to himself.

"What'd I tell you?" Chuck exulted.

"Shut up! He's confessin'--let him alone an' he'll get it out of his
conscience sooner or later!"

"Had a what?" Parker urged sympathetically. "Maybe you didn't have
one--maybe you only imagined you did!"

"Had a brother--anyhow a half a one--our mothers was the same but
different fathers on account of mine dyin' when I was little and his
marrying our mother again; we was playmates together in our innocent
childhood and infancy until I run away and went to sea and finally
anchored on the Kiowa and got to raisin' cattle--"