The fingers tightened reassuringly upon the woman's shoulder and reassuring were the words with which he answered the appeal of the eyes that looked imploringly into his own: "No, no, girl--not that. Not nothin' I've done sence--sence I growed up. I've played the game square sence then." The man seated himself beside her upon the sill: "It's a long story an' starts back, let's see, I was seventeen then, an' now I'm twenty-six--nine years ago, it was, I was workin' over near Goldfield in a mine. Everything was wide open them days an' I was jest a fool kid, spendin' my wages fast as I got 'em, same as all the rest of the miners. "Out of the riff-raff that worked there in the mines was four men I throw'd in with. They'd drifted in from God knows where, an' they'd all be'n cowpunchers, an' their talk run mostly to the open range. They was counted hard in a camp that was made up of hard men, an' they kep' pretty much to theirselves. Somehow or other they kind of took a shine to me, an' it wasn't long till the five of us was thick as thieves. When we'd be lickered up, makin' the rounds of the saloons, men would edge along an' give us room at the bar. They didn't want none of our meat; although we never made no gun-play, they always figgered we would. "Bein' a kid, that way, it made me feel mighty big an' important to be jammin' around with 'em. Lookin' back at it now, from my experience on the other side of the bar, I know that if that bunch had drifted into a place I was runnin' I'd spot how my guns laid under the bar so's I could reach 'em without lookin', you bet! "There was Old Pete Bradley, one-eyed, he was, an' he didn't have no teeth but false ones that clicked when he talked an' rattled when he et. An' Mike Hinch, with a foretop of thick black hair that hung down over his eyes so it looked like he had to squinch down to see in under it. An' Scar Lamento, which he was a Dago or Spanish, an' had met up with an accident that tore his mouth down one corner so's he always looked like he was grinnin'. An' Wild Hoss Duffy. An' me. They wasn't none of 'em miners, an' they was always cussin' the mines an' wishin' they was back in the cow-country, so, come spring, we decided to beat it. "Duffy, he know'd where there was a wild horse range up towards Idaho an' he wanted we should go up there an' hunt wild horses. Scar Lamento, he claimed there was more in it to go to Mexico an' start a revolution, an' Old Pete, an' Mike Hinch, they had each of 'em some other idee. But Duffy's horse range bein' nearest, we decided to tackle it first. We started out with a pack outfit--too little grub, an' too much whisky--an' hit up into the damnedest country of blazin' white flats an' dead mountains you ever heard tell of.