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On the Frontier by Bret Harte
page 117 of 160 (73%)
truth, and I kin prove it. For I kin swear that when that there young
woman was sailin' outer the Golden Gate, Spencer Tucker was in my bar
room; I kin swear that I fed him, lickered him, give him a hoss and set
him in his road to Monterey that very night."

"Then, where is he now?" said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly facing them.

They looked at each other, and then looked at Mrs. Tucker.
Then both together replied slowly and in perfect unison,
"That's--what--we--want--to--know." They seemed so satisfied
with this effect that they as deliberately repeated,
"Yes--that's--what--we--want--to--know."

Between the shock of meeting the partner of her husband's guilt and
the unexpected revelation to her inexperience, that in suggestion and
appearance there was nothing beyond the recollection of that guilt that
was really shocking in the woman--between the extravagant extremes
of hope and fear suggested by their words, there was something so
grotesquely absurd in the melodramatic chorus that she with difficulty
suppressed a hysterical laugh.

"That's the way to take it," said the woman, putting her own
good-humored interpretation upon Mrs. Tucker's expression. "Now, look
here! I'll tell you all about it." She carefully selected the most
comfortable chair, and sitting down, lightly crossed her hands in her
lap. "Well, I left here on the 13th of last January on the ship Argo,
calculating that your husband would join the ship just inside the Heads.
That was our arrangement, but if anything happened to prevent him, he
was to join me in Acapulco. Well! He didn't come aboard, and we sailed
without him. But it appears now he did attempt to join the ship, but his
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