“‘I like it,’ says she. ‘It’s so sound and so sweet; because if there’s any town on the Big Divide where a good milliner is needed, it’s Murdock. And while I think of it,’ says she, staring at him, ‘I’m not certain you wouldn’t make a better milliner yourself than you are editor or gunman.’” Circumlocutory Smith meditated over this for some minutes, and then said: “She’s a Cathcart. That sounds just like Cathcart used to talk.” “Nope. She’s a Riggs. Don’t you remember what a sarcastic devil he was?” “So was Cathcart, when drunk. I bet a hundred dollars she’s a Cathcart.” “It’s a bet. I’ll take it. Shake! You seem to forget that Riggs was sarcastic when he was sober, and this Pearl’s always dead-cold sober.” “She’s a Cathcart. The bet’s done made. I’ll win your hundred.” * * * * * The discussion of the antecedents of the woman known as Pearl Brown was, for these two old frontiersmen, a continuous point of difference. She had let them know that once upon a time in Tucson, in the more reckless days of Trigger Smith, she had known both Smith and Fosdike, and had asserted that in those days there had been but four decent men in the town: Father Wyatt, a priest; Henry Bean, a mail carrier; a saloon keeper named Riggs; and a blacksmith called Cathcart, to one of which she “belonged.” Inasmuch as neither the mail carrier nor the priest had ever married, and in those days she must have been very young, they reasoned that her father had been one of the latter two. Furthermore, they were annoyed because the knowledge was one-sided, she apparently knowing all their past, while they were ignorant of hers. Also, with characteristic outspokenness she had told them not to ask her any questions. “A shut mouth catches no flies,” she told Fosdike, “Although, come to consider it, perhaps that’s the reason you are compelled to wear that red fly trap of a beard. Must have been born with your mouth open. Wonder how your mother protected you when you were young?” That ended all further personal interrogations. The two old friends believed that she was not proud of her ownership of the Alamo, which she ran by sheer fighting strength--most successfully, from a financial viewpoint. The miner repaired to his favorite loafing place in the saddlery shop with ulterior motives, for the gray-bearded old saddler was a gossip and a philosopher. Smith perched himself on the end of the workbench, dangling his long legs and inhaling the smell of freshly cut leather, and talked of many subjects before broaching the one in his mind--about hand-carved Spanish saddles; silver-mounted Mexican saddles, and cowpuncher “rocking-chairs.” Then he edged closer to home topics until he brought the subject around to the Alamo.