Under my coat I pushed the muzzle of my gun into his ribs. He looked straight ahead and done what I told him to. If he was scared bad he didn't let on. "I haven't got any gun," says he after a while. "I don't pack one." "I haven't packed one for years myself," says I. "Sometimes a man has to pack one for coyotes and such things," says I. He got kind of red in his face, but he didn't say anything. "I'm just that kind of a man--when it comes to a show-down I don't care what happens," says I. "And I reckon you see it's a show-down now. Tell me where she is." "She's out at our place," says he; "forty miles or so--you know where it is. I've got the Arrow Head Spring homestead; I bought it a while ago. I've got a few cows--not many. You see," says he, "I've saved a little money--not a whole lot. Our property isn't paid for yet. We've got a quarter section, but you know the range is in back of it. We think we can make some sort of a start." "With her? Her that was used to so much?" says I. "Are you married? But, of course, that was what you was after--her money, not her." He flushed plumb red then, and sort of swallowed several times. "You think high of me and her, don't you, Curly?" says he. I seen that, after all, I was too late; and my gun dropped down into the bottom of the buckboard, and neither of us noticed it. "You married her--our girl," says I, "that we'd tried so hard to get a place for? She could of owned the whole ranch--and you give her forty acres, part paid for! That's fine--for the girl we loved so much!" "You don't love her no more than I do," says he. "You never tried harder for her than I'll try for her. Love--why, what do you know about it? If she hadn't loved me do you think she'd of done what she done and run away with me? Do you think she'd of broke her father's heart and forgot all that had been done for her if it hadn't been for love? If it hadn't been for thinking of those things we'd be the happiest two young fools in all the world. We are now! She's some happy anyway. But it breaks my own heart to think she isn't any happier." After a while he goes on: "What could I do, Curly? It's a awful thing to love a woman this way; it's a terrible thing. There's no sense nor reason about it at all," says he. "But now if I only could have had any decent chance----" "Pick up your gun," says he after a while; "it might fall out." We rode on for quite a while. He made like he was going to reach into his pocket for something and I covered him quick, but he only hauled out a piece of Arrow Head plug. He offered me a chaw, absent-minded. "No," says I; "I can't take no chaw of tobacco with such as you." He put it back in his pocket, then, and didn't take none his own self. His face was right red and troubled now.