It come over me all of a sudden that I
loved her. I tried to get out of it, but I was hooked. I watched
close, an' I saw that she liked me--maybe not altogether for what she
thought I'd done for you. But you was in the road. I knew she liked
you, too, though she wouldn't show it. 'Everything's fair in love or
war,' I kept sayin' over an' over to myself when I'd lay thinkin' it
over of nights. But, I knew it was a damned lie when I was sayin' it.
If you'd be'n milk-gutted, an' louse-hearted, like pilgrims are
supposed to be, there'd be'n a different story to tell, because you
wouldn't have be'n fit for her. But I liked you most as hard as I
loved her. 'From now on it's a square game,' I says, so I made Old Man
Johnson cough up that outfit of raiment, an' made you shave, so she
wouldn't have to take you lookin' like a sheep-herdin' greaser, if she
was a-goin' to take you instead of me. After that I come right out an'
told her just where I stood, an' from then on I've played the game
square. The women ain't divided up right in this world. There ought
to have be'n two of her, but they ain't another in the whole world, I
reckon, like her; so one of us had to lose. An', now, seein' how I've
lied you into all this misery, you ought to just naturally up an' knock
hell out of me.
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