"What have I been doing?" he murmured at length. He shrugged away his last
thoughts. "I drifted about for a while after the pardon came down from the
governor. People knew me, you see, and what they knew about me didn't
please them. Even today Jim Silent and Jim Silent's crew isn't forgotten.
Then don't look at me like that, Kate; no, I played straight all the
time---then I ran into Buck and he and I had tried each other out, we had
at least one thing in common"--here he looked at Buck and they both
flushed--"and we made a partnership of it. We've been together five years
now."
"I knew you could break away, Lee. I used to tell you that."
"You helped me more than you knew," he said quietly.
She smiled and then turned to escape him. "And now you, Buck?"
"Since then we've made a bit of coin punching cows and we've blown it in
again prospecting. Blown it in? Kate, we've shot enough powder to lift that
mountain yonder but all we've got is color. You could gild the sky with
what we've seen but we haven't washed enough dust to wear a hole in a
tissue-paper pocket.
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