they say, and that's why they call him Cold Feet. Besides, he teaches
the school. Where's they a real man that would do a schoolma'am's work?
Living or dying, he ain't much good. You can lay to that!"

Sinclair was comforted by this speech. Perhaps the schoolteacher was,
as Montana stated, not much good, dead or alive. Sinclair had known
many men whose lives were not worth an ounce of powder. In this case he
would let Cold Feet be hanged. It was a conclusion sufficiently grim,
but Riley Sinclair was admittedly a grim man. He had lived for himself,
he had worked for himself. On his younger brother, Hal, he had wasted
all the better and tenderer side of his nature. For Hal's education and
advantage he had sweated and saved for a long time. With the death of
Hal, the better side of Riley Sinclair died.

The horses sweated up a rise of ground.

"For a schoolteacher he lives sort of far out of town, I figure," said
Riley Sinclair.

"That's on account of Sally Bent," answered Denver Jim. "Sally and her
brother got a shack out this way, and Cold Feet boards with 'em."

"Sally Bent! That's an old-maidish-sounding name."

Denver Jim grinned broadly. "Tolerable," he said, "just tolerable
old-maidish sounding."

When they reached the top of the knoll, the horses paused, as if by
common assent. Now they stood with their heads bowed, sullen, tired
already, steam going up from them into the cool of the morning.