"In the first place, she's not my woman, in th' way you mean; if she was, I wouldn't stand here an' only tell you to shut your mouth when you talked about her like that. Sick as you are, I'd choke you, maybe. In th' second place, I'm no gentleman, I guess,"--with a smile breaking through into a laugh. "I'm just a kind of he-man an' I don't know much about th' way you gentlemen have dealin's with each other.
"No more booze for you to-day. Get that in your head, if you can. I've got coffee for you now an' some soup."
He turned and walked to the stove in the far corner, kicked open the draft and took a cup from the shelf above. All the while the bleared, scarce understanding gaze of the man in bed followed him as though he were trying to comprehend, trying to get the meaning of Bayard's simple, direct sentences.
After he had been helped in drinking a quantity of hot coffee and had swallowed a few spoonfuls of soup, Lytton dropped back on the pillow, sighed and, with his puffed eyes half open, slipped back into a state that was half slumber, half stupor.
Bayard took the wounded arm from beneath the cover, unwrapped the bandages, eyed the clotted tear critically and bound it up again. Then he walked to the doorway and, with hands hooked in his belt, scowled out across the lavendar floor of the treeless valley which spread before and below him, rising to blue heights in the far, far distance. He stood there a long, silent interval, staring vacantly at that vast panorama, then, moved slowly across the fenced dooryard, let himself into a big enclosure and approached a round corral, through the bars of which the sorrel horse watched his progress with alert ears. For a half hour he busied himself with currycomb and brush, rubbing the fine hair until the sunlight was shot back from it in points of golden light and all the time the frown between his brows grew deeper, more perplexed. Finally, he straightened, tapped the comb against a post to free it of dust, flung an arm affectionately about the horse's neck, caressed one of the great, flat cheeks, idly, and, after a moment, began to laugh.
"Because we set our fool eyes on beauty in distress we cross a jag-cure with a reform school an' set up to herd th' cussed thing!" he chuckled. "Abe, was there ever two bigger fools 'n you an' me? Because she's a beauty, she'll draw attention like honey draws bees; because she's in trouble an' can't hide it, she'll have everybody prospectin' round to locate her misery an' when they do, we'll be in th' middle of it all, keepin' th' worthless husband of a pretty young woman away from her. All out of th' goodness of our hearts. It won't sound good when they talk about it an' giggle, Abe. It won't sound good!" And then, very seriously,