"
Now at last I could talk. I struck my hand hard on his shoulder and
looked him full in the eye. "Colonel Meriwether," I said to him, "I am
ashamed of you."
"What do you mean?" He frowned sternly and shook off my hand.
"I brought her through," I said, "and if it would do any good, I would
lie down here and die for her. If what I say is not true, draw up your
men for a firing squad and let us end it. I don't care to go back to
Laramie."
"What good would that do?" said he. "It's the girl's _name_ that's
compromised, man! Why, the news of this is all over the country--the
wires have carried it both sides of the mountains; the papers are full
of it in the East. You have been gone nearly three months together, and
all the world knows it. Don't you suppose all the world will _talk_? Did
I not see--" he motioned his hand toward our encampment.
He babbled of such things, small, unimportant, to me, late from large
things in life. I interrupted long enough to tell him briefly of our
journey, of our hardships, of what we had gone through, of how my
sickness had rendered it impossible for us to return at once, of how we
had wandered, with what little judgment remained to us, how we had lived
in the meantime.
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