PAINTED ROCK
went over the accounts of the business with me. I noted that he was considerable gentler and softer in his ways, and there was a dreamy look about him, like as if some lady had taken hold of his little heart and given it a tender squeeze, and he soon let on that he had run plump agin the greatest daisy of a girl that he had ever seen while he was over in your monarch-ridden country, and he said that her and him had fixed up to jine teams and pull across the flowery prairie of life while they two did live. For an Englishman and a store-keeper he was some poetical about this incident, which had happened to him for the first time, so that all his eemotions were young and virgin, and some surprised me. He reckoned to sell out in six months, and go home permanent and put his pile into a business that the girl's brother was boss of, and that was how him and Hale came into the arena and locked horns and made the dust fly. Hale was always a bad man to deal with, and not what I should call honest, onless I went out of my way to tell a lie. But Smith was straight about money; as straight as a straight
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