and free silver—and he got six feet of one and none of the other."
Only once did he mention his mother. She gathered that, in his queer way, he was afraid of showing feeling.
"She was sure a good woman," he told her. "She stuck by, when her folks back home were trying to rope her back every way they knew." He hesitated. "She got her comfort out of religion," he added.
"Don't you believe in God, Tom?"
"I'll believe in Santa Claus if you say so," he said, and smiled at her. But he added, seeing that she expected him to: "When I'm in a fix I do. Once or twice it's seemed like He was the only one who could get me out. And I'm still here."
He had enlarged on that, seeing that she had rather liked it, and even blinded as she was she perceived that in the adventures he related it was he and not God who received the major portion of the credit.
But he did believe in God. He had admitted it. It somehow justified her own belief in him.
Only by the sheerest accident did she discover that he had gone to France during the war. He had volunteered "for a change," he told her, and the exploit of which he was apparently most proud had been the stealing of a mule for some nefarious purpose of his own. But like his belief in a God who got one out of tight places, this too served to solidify the pedestal on which she was placing him. He had been a soldier.
"Did you get any fighting?"
"Fired a gun now and then."
She was not fooled.
Attracted he might be. Was, indeed. She had burst on his drab life, the exotic product of a civilization he hardly knew. He was as curious about her as he was interested. But that even in a small degree he reciprocated the devouring infatuation she felt she had no reason to believe.
And then, on the night in question, she began to wonder.
They had traveled along a narrow trail over the foot hills, and at last they could see down in the valley the lights of
