But now it’s gone.”

“Ahuh. Wal, I don’t know whether or not you’re complimentin’ me,” drawled Nevada. “Billy the Kid was a pretty wild hombre, wasn’t he?”

“Humph! You’d have thought so if you’d gone through that Lincoln County cattle war with me an’ my husband. They killed three hundred men, and my Jack was one of them.”

“Lincoln County war?” mused Nevada. “Shore I’ve heard of that, too. An’ how many of the three hundred did Billy the Kid kill?”

“Lord only knows,” she returned, fervently. “Billy had twenty-one men to his gun before the war, an’ that wasn’t countin’ Greasers or Injuns. They said he was death on them… . Yes, Jim, you had the look of Billy, an’ if you’d kept on you’d been another like him. But somethin’ has happened to you. I ain’t inquisitive, but have you lost your nerve? Gunmen do that sometimes, you know.”

“Shore, that’s it, Mrs. Wood. I’ve no more nerve than a chicken,” drawled Nevada, with all his old easy coolness. It was good for him to hear her voice and to exercise his own.

“Shoo! An’ I’ll bet that’s all you tell me about yourself,” she said. “Jim Lacy, you left here a boy an’ you’ve come back a man. Wonder what Lize Teller will think of you now. She was moony about you, the hussy!”

“Lize Teller,” echoed Nevada, ponderingly. “Shore I remember now. Is she heah?”

“She about bosses Lineville, Jim. She doesn’t live with my humble self any more, but hangs out at the Gold Mine.”

Nevada found a seat on a low bench between the stove and the corner, a place that had been a favorite with him and into which he dropped instinctively, and settled himself for a talk. This woman held an unique position in the little border hamlet, in that she possessed the confidence of gamblers, miners, rustlers, everybody. She was a good soul, always ready to help anyone in sickness or trouble. Whatever her life had been in the past—and Nevada guessed it had been one with her outlaw husband—she was an honest and hard-working woman now. In the wild days of his former association with Lineville he had not appreciated her. She probably had some other idler or fugitive like himself doing the very odd jobs about the place that he had applied for. Nevada remembered that her kindliness for him had been sort of motherly, no doubt owing to the fact that he had been the youngest of the notorious characters of Lineville.

“Lize married yet?” began Nevada, casually.

“No indeed, an’ she never will be now,” replied Mrs. Wood, forcibly. “She had her chance, a decent cattleman named Holder, from Eureka. Reckon he knew he was buyin’ stolen cattle. But for all that he was a mighty fine sort for Lineville.