Fact is, we suited
each other from the ground up. We frolicked round a-plenty, like
young colts will, and there was nothing on this green earth Dave
could have asked from me that I wouldn't have done for him.
Nothing except one, I reckon, and Dave never asked that of me."
Mackenzie puffed at his cigar a silent moment before resuming.
"It happened we both fell in love with the same girl, little
Frances Clark, of the Double T Ranch. Dave was a better looker
than me and a more taking fellow, but somehow Frances favored me
from the start. Dave stayed till the finish, and when he seen he
had lost he stood up with me at the wedding. We had agreed, you
see, that whoever won it wasn't to break up our friendship.
"Well, Frankie and I were married, and in course of time we had
two children. My boy, Tom, is the older. The other was a little
girl, named after her mother." The cattleman waited a moment to
steady his voice, and spoke through teeth set deep in his Havana.
"I haven't seen her, as I said, since she was two years and ten
months old--not since the night Dave disappeared."
Bucky looked up quickly with a question on his lips, but he did
not need to word it.
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