"I'm sorry," she answered. "When I told you you'd better go and do your time and get done with it, I didn't mean to be nasty. But I was thinking that a man as sensitive as I judge you to be would be happier in the long run. Now pop had an old pal who drifted along here a couple of years ago, and pop had it all figured out to shoot him right up into Canada, but, would you believe it, that man simply wouldn't go! The very idea of being in a safe place where he was reasonably certain of not being bothered worried him. He simply couldn't stand it. He was so used to being chased and shot at it didn't seem natural to be out of danger, and pop had to give him money to take him to Oklahoma where he'd have the fun of teasing the sheriffs along. And he had his wish and I suppose he died happy, for we read in the papers a little while afterward that he'd been shot and killed trying to hold up a bank." Archie expressed his impatience of the gentleman who preferred death in Oklahoma to a life of tranquillity in the Canadian wilds. "Oh, they never learn anything," Sally declared. "I wouldn't be surprised if pop didn't pull out some time and beat it for the West. It must be awful tame for a man who's stuck pistols into the faces of express messengers and made bank tellers hand out their cash to settle down in a place like this where there's nothing much to do but go to church and prayer meeting. I don't know how many men pop's killed in his time but there must be quite a bunch. But pop doesn't seem to worry much. It seems to me if I'd ever pumped a man full of lead I'd have a bad case of insomnia." "Well, I don't know," remarked Archie, weighing the point judicially. "I suppose you get used to it in time. Your father seems very gentle. You probably exaggerate the number of his--er--homicides." He felt himself utterly unqualified to express with any adequacy his sympathy for a girl whose father had flirted with the gallows so shamelessly. Walker had courageously entered express cars and jumped into locomotive cabs in the pursuit of his calling and this was much nobler than shooting a man in the back. Sally would probably despise him if she knew what he had done. She demurred to his remark about her father's amiability. "Well, pop can be pretty rough sometimes. He and I have our little troubles." "Nothing serious, I'm sure. I can't imagine any one being unkind to you, Sally." "It's nice of you to say that. But I'm not perfect and I don't pretend to be!"