the trooper closely.

"Business. Not to smile on virtue, but to collar what is wrong. I guess
you ought to be ready by this time to go into quarters, Pierre. You've
had a long innings."

"Not yet, Sergeant Tom, though I love the Irish, and your company would
make me happy. But I am so innocent, and the world--it cannot spare me
yet. But I think you come to smile on virtue, all the same, Sergeant
Tom. She is beautiful is Jen Galbraith. Ah, that makes your eye bright
--so! You Riders of the Plains, you do two things at one time. You make
this hour someone happy, and that hour someone unhappy. In one hand the
soft glove of kindness, in the other, voila! the cold glove of steel.
We cannot all be great like that, Sergeant Tom."

"Not great, but clever. Voila, the Pretty Pierre! In one hand he holds
the soft paper, the pictures that deceive--kings, queens, and knaves; in
the other, pictures in gold and silver--money won from the pockets of
fools. And so, as you say, 'bien,' and we each have our way, bedad!"

Sergeant Tom noticed that the half-breed's eyes nearly closed, as if to
hide the malevolence that was in them. He would not have been surprised
to see a pistol drawn. But he was quite fearless, and if it was not his
duty to provoke a difficulty, his fighting nature would not shrink from
giving as good as he got. Besides, so far as that nature permitted, he
hated Pretty Pierre. He knew the ruin that this gambler had caused here
and there in the West, and he was glad that Fort Desire, at any rate,
knew him less than it did formerly.

Just then Peter Galbraith entered with the coffee, followed by Jen. When