She realized his eyes were on her, demanding the truth--and his eyes were uncomfortably steady as she had reason to know. "If I spoke I should hurt your feelings," she urged, summoning all her courage. "You know as well as I do that the first time I met you I didn't know who you were." He did not seem much disconcerted, except that he tossed away the unlighted cigarette. "You don't know now," was his only comment. "I can't help knowing what is said about you--you and your friends." He made an impatient gesture. "That gives you no clue to me." "What are people to believe when such stories are public property?" "Only what they know to be true." "How are they to find out what is true?" "By going straight to the person most concerned in the stories." "Would you honestly expect a young woman to go to work and investigate all the charges against men she hears in Sleepy Cat?" "We are talking now about the charges against one man--against me. I want to give you an instance: "I suppose there's been a good many hard words over your way about my keeping Abe Hawk out of the hands of your people. Because I did shelter him--you know how--they've blackened my name here at Sleepy Cat and down at Medicine Bend. A man doesn't have to approve all another man does, to befriend him when he's down and a bunch of men--not as good as he--set out to finish him. I haven't got any apologies to make to anybody for protecting Abe when he was wounded--and if he wasn't wounded, no man would talk any kind of protection to him. But you've been fed up with stories about it--I know that--so," he added grimly, "I'm going to tell you one story more. "I grew up in this country when the mining fever was on--everybody plumb crazy in the rush for the Horsehead Camp in the Falling Wall country. One winter five hundred men in tents were hanging around Sleepy Cat waiting for the first thaw, to get up to the camp. That's when I got acquainted with Abe Hawk. Abe was carrying the mails to the mines. He hadn't a red cent in the world. My father had just died; I was a green kid with a pocketful of money. Abe didn't teach me any bad habits--I didn't need any teacher. One night we were sitting next to each other, with Harry Tenison dealing faro. "I heard Abe was going up over the pass to Horsehead with the Christmas bag. The few miners that got in the fall before had hung up a fat purse for their Christmas mail and Abe needed the money. He was the only man with the crazy nerve to try such a thing. And there were twenty men, with all kinds of money, crowding him to take them along: to beat the bunch in might mean a million dollar strike to any tenderfoot in Sleepy Cat.