"Bill Judson was a major, an' next to playin' poker, he liked other things. Every time he'd get three cards of a suit in a row, he'd draw to 'em, hopin' for a straight flush. That hope cost him, I reckon, hundreds of dollars, an' at last he filled one--but, hell! Everyone laid down, an' he gathered the ante." The Texan rolled another cigarette. "An' that's the way it is with me--I tried to force my luck. I might as well own up to it right here an' get it over with. You've be'n square, straight through, an' I haven't. I was stringin' you with all that bunk about politics, an' you bein' sure to get hung for shootin' Purdy. Fact is, the grand jury would have turned you loose as soon as your case come up. But, from the first minute I laid eyes on that girl, I wanted her. I'm bad enough, but not like Purdy. I figured if she'd go half-way, I'd go the other half. So I planned the raid on the wool-warehouse, an' the fake lynchin', purpose to get her out of town. I didn't care a damn about you--you was just an excuse to get her away. I figured on losing you after we hit the mountains. The first jolt I got was in the warehouse, when we didn't have to drag you out. Then I got another hell of a one in the coulee under the cottonwoods. Then they got to comin' so thick I lost track of 'em. An' the first thing I knew I would have killed any man that would look crossways at _her_. It come over me all of a sudden that I loved her. I tried to get out of it, but I was hooked. I watched close, an' I saw that she liked me--maybe not altogether for what she thought I'd done for you. But you was in the road. I knew she liked you, too, though she wouldn't show it. 'Everything's fair in love or war,' I kept sayin' over an' over to myself when I'd lay thinkin' it over of nights. But, I knew it was a damned lie when I was sayin' it. If you'd be'n milk-gutted, an' louse-hearted, like pilgrims are supposed to be, there'd be'n a different story to tell, because you wouldn't have be'n fit for her. But I liked you most as hard as I loved her. 'From now on it's a square game,' I says, so I made Old Man Johnson cough up that outfit of raiment, an' made you shave, so she wouldn't have to take you lookin' like a sheep-herdin' greaser, if she was a-goin' to take you instead of me. After that I come right out an' told her just where I stood, an' from then on I've played the game square. The women ain't divided up right in this world. There ought to have be'n two of her, but they ain't another in the whole world, I reckon, like her; so one of us had to lose. An', now, seein' how I've lied you into all this misery, you ought to just naturally up an' knock hell out of me. We'll still keep the game fair an' square. I'll throw away my gun an' you can sail in as quick as you get your sleeves rolled up. But, I doubt if you can get away with it, at that."