It fair hurt me to see Barbie's face, so hard it was an' so different from the real Barbie: but it warmed my heart to hear the way she made that Silver Dick ring out. Oh, she was a thoroughbred every inch of her, that girl was. Piker didn't say a word; he just picked up his coin an' walked out o' the room, an' I raised up the window an' drew a deep breath. The blame pole-cat had managed to slip out an' saddle his pony about supper time, an' in a second he dashed away toward Webb Station, mighty thankful in his nasty little heart that he wasn't bound for hell, where he rightly belonged. "Did you ever know Dick before he came here, Happy?" asked Barbie. "I swear to heaven that I never knew that our Dick was Silver Dick until this very night," sez I; "but I'd be willing to stake my life on his word, an' I'd take it again the word of any other livin' man--bar none." "Thank you, Happy. Good-night." She held her head high as she walked out o' the room; but I knew that livin' serpents was tearin' at her heart. Ol' Cast Steel sat for an hour, his chin on his hands an' his elbows on the table, lookin' at the pile of money an' checks on the table before him. "Gold, gold, gold!" he mutters at last; "it builds the churches an' the schoolhouses an' the homes; an' it fills the jails and the insane asylums an' hell itself. It drives brother to murder brother, an' neither love nor friendship is proof against its curse. It starves those who scorn it, while those who pay out their souls for it find themselves sinking, sinking, sinking in its hideous quicksand until at last it closes above their mad screams. God! if I only had my life to live over!" That was just the way he said it, deep an' hoarse an' coning between his set teeth; an' I felt the hair raisin' on my head. He looked like a lost soul, an' the whites of his eyes showed in ghastly rings around the pupils. "You take this rubbish, Happy," sez he, turnin' on me. "You're too much like the birds an' the beasts for it to ever injure you. Take it an' spend it--drink it, throw it away, burn it up, destroy it, an' when it is gone come back here an' live in the open again an' you'll never be far from the spirit of God." Well, I knew it was ol' Cast Steel who was speakin', but it was mighty hard to believe it. "I don't mean no disrespect to you, Jabez," I sez, edgin' toward the door, "but I'll see you damned first." An' I slid outside an' straddled a pony an' rode till the dawn wind blew all the fever out of me an' let the sunshine in. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR FEMININE LOGIC