"Yes!" cried Jackson suddenly, rising and catching his chair by the back. "Yes--and been settled for it! I didn’t want to do it; I didn’t want to get into trouble. You always was that way, Jimmy." Archie looked at Curly Jackson as he stood with an arm outstretched toward Keenan; his figure was tall and straight and slender, and as he noted the short brown curls that gave him his name, the tanned cheeks, the attitude in which he held himself, something confused Archie, some thought he could not catch--some idea that evaded him, coming near till he was just on the point of grasping it, then eluding him, like a name one tries desperately to recall. "I didn’t have my finger on the trigger," Jackson went on, speaking in his high, shrill, excited voice. "I held it on the trigger-guard all the time." And then suddenly it came to Archie--that bronzed skin, that set of the shoulders, that trimness, that alertness, that coolness, Jackson could have got nowhere but in the army. He had been a soldier--what was more, he had been a regular. And Archie felt something like devotion for him. "Sit down, Curly," said Gibbs, and Jackson sank into his chair. A minute later Jackson turned to Mason and said quietly: "You see, Joe, I don’t like to talk about it--nor to think of it. I didn’t want to kill him, God knows. I don’t see anything in it to get swelled about and be the wise guy." XVII Curly Jackson sat for a moment idly making little circles on the polished surface of the table with the moist bottom of his glass; then abruptly he rose and left the room. The others followed him with their eyes. Archie was deeply interested. He longed to talk to Jackson, longed to show him how he admired him, but he was timid in this company, and felt that it became him best to remain quiet. But Jackson’s conduct in the tragedy had fired Archie’s imagination, and Jackson was as much the hero in his eyes as he was in the eyes of his companions. And then Archie thought of his own skill with the carbine and the revolver, and he wished he could display it to these men; perhaps in that way he could attract their notice and gain their approval. "He doesn’t want to talk about it," said Mason when Jackson had disappeared. "No," said Gibbs. "Let him alone." Jackson was gone but a few minutes, and then he returned and quietly took his seat at the table. They talked of other things then, but Archie could understand little they said, for they spoke in a language that was almost wholly unintelligible to him. But he sat and listened with a bewildering sense of mystery that made their conversation all the more fascinating. What they said conveyed to him a sense of a wild, rough, dangerous life that was full of adventure and a kind of low romance, and Archie felt that he would like to know these men better; if possible, to be one of them, and at the thought his heart beat faster, as at the sudden possibility of a new achievement.