"She's in Wyoming," said Taterleg; "a lady I used to rush out in Great Bend, Kansas, a long time ago." "Oh," said the Duke, relieved and interested. "How long ago was that?" "Over four years," sighed Taterleg, as if it might have been a quarter of a century. "Not so very long, Taterleg." "Yes, but a lot of fellers can court a girl in four years, Duke." The Duke thought it over a spell. "Yes, I reckon they can," he allowed. "Don't she ever write to you?" "I guess I'm more to blame than she is on that, Duke. She _did_ write, but I was kind of sour and dropped her. It's hard to git away from, though; it's a-comin' over me ag'in. I might 'a' been married and settled down with that girl now, me and her a-runnin' a oyster parlor in some good little railroad town, if it hadn't 'a' been for a Welshman name of Elwood. He was a stonecutter, that Elwood feller was, Duke, workin' on bridge 'butments on the Santa Fe. That feller told her I was married and had four children; he come between us and bust us up." "Wasn't he onery!" said the Duke, feelingly. "I was chef in the hotel where that girl worked waitin' table, drawin' down good money, and savin' it, too. But that derned Welshman got around her and she growed cold. When she left Great Bend she went to Wyoming to take a job--Lander was the town she wrote from, I can put my finger on it in the map with my eyes shut. I met her when she was leavin' for the depot, draggin' along with her grip and no Welshman in a mile of her to give her a hand. I went up and tipped my hat, but I never smiled, Duke, for I was sour over the way that girl she'd treated me. I just took hold of that grip and carried it to the depot for her and tipped my hat to her once more. 'You're a gentleman, whatever they say of you, Mr. Wilson,' she said." "_She_ did?" "She did, Duke. 'You're a gentleman, Mr. Wilson, whatever they say of you,' she said. Them was her words, Duke. 'Farewell to _you_,' I said, distant and high-mighty, for I was hurt, Duke--I was hurt right down to the bone." "I bet you was, old feller." "'Farewell to _you_,' I says, and the tears come in her eyes, and she says to me--wipin' 'em on a han'kerchief I give her, nothing any Welshman ever done for her, and you can bank on that Duke--she says to me: 'I'll always think of you as a gentleman, Mr. Wilson.' I wasn't onto what that Welshman told her then; I didn't know the straight of it till she wrote and told me after she got to Wyoming." "It was too bad, old feller." "Wasn't it hell? I was so sore when she wrote, the way she'd believed that little sawed-off snorter with rock dust in his hair, I never answered that letter for a long time. Well, I got another letter from her about a year after that. She was still in the same place, doin' well. Her name was Nettie Morrison." "Maybe it is yet, Taterleg."