"I don't see why you should feel like that," said Dora gravely. "You are getting along. It's slow, but you're learning." "Oh, yes, I'm learnin'," Smith answered grimly--"fast." He saw her wondering look and went on fiercely. "Girl, don't you see what I mean? Don't you _sabe_? My feelin' for you is more nor friendship. I can't tell you how I feel. It's nothin' I ever had before, but I've heard of it a-plenty. It's love--that's what it is! I've seen it, too, a-plenty. "There's two things in the world a feller'll go through hell for--just two: love and gold. I don't mean money, but gold--the pure stuff. They'll waller through snow-drifts, they'll swim rivers with the ice runnin', they'll crawl through canyons and over trails on their hands and knees, they'll starve and they'll freeze, they'll work till the blood runs from their blistered hands, they'll kill their horses and their pardners, for gold! And they'll do it for love. Yes, I've seen it a-plenty, me--Smith. "Things I've done, I've done, and they don't worry me none," he went on, "but lately I've thought of Dutch Joe. I worked him over for singin' a love-song, and I wisht I hadn't. He'd held up a stage, and was cached in my camp till things simmered down. It was lonesome, and I'd want to talk; but he'd sit back in the dark, away from the camp-fire, and sing to himself about 'ridin' to Annie.' How the miles wasn't long or the trail rough if only he was 'ridin' to Annie.' Sittin' back there in the brush, he sounded like a sick coyote a-hollerin'. It hadn't no tune, and I thought it was the damnedest fool song I ever heard. After he'd sung it more'n five hundred times, I hit him on the head with a six-shooter, and we mixed. He quit singin', but he held that gretch against me as long as he lived. "I thought it was because he was Dutch, but it wasn't. 'Twas love. Why, girl, I'd ride as long as my horse could stand up under me, and then I'd hoof it, just to hear you say, 'Smith, do you think it will rain?'" "Oh, I never thought of this!" cried Dora, as Smith paused. Her face was full of distress, and her hands lay tightly clenched in her lap. "Do you mean I haven't any show--no show at all?" The color fading from Smith's face left it a peculiar yellow. "It never occurred to me that you would misunderstand, or think anything but that I wanted to help you. I thought that you wanted to learn so that you would have a better chance in life." "Did you--honest? Are you as innocent as that, girl?" he asked in savage scepticism. "Did you believe that I'd set and study them damned verbs just so I'd have a better chanct in life?" "You said so." "Oh, yes, maybe I _said_ so." "Surely, _surely_, you don't think I would intentionally mislead you?" "When a woman wants a man to dress or act or talk different, she generally cares some."