The hosses an' the child
are all you have left. Come!"
"No, no, Lassiter. I'll never leave Utah. What would I do in the
world with my broken fortunes and my broken heart? Ill never
leave these purple slopes I love so well."
"I reckon I ought to 've knowed that. Presently you'll be livin'
down here in a hovel, en' presently Jane Withersteen will be a
memory. I only wanted to have a chance to show you how a man--any
man--can be better 'n he was. If we left Utah I could prove--I
reckon I could prove this thing you call love. It's strange, an'
hell an' heaven at once, Jane Withersteen. 'Pears to me that
you've thrown away your big heart on love--love of religion an'
duty an' churchmen, an' riders an' poor families an' poor
children! Yet you can't see what love is--how it changes a
person!...Listen, an' in tellin' you Milly Erne's story I'll show
you how love changed her.
"Milly an' me was children when our family moved from Missouri to
Texas, an' we growed up in Texas ways same as if we'd been born
there. We had been poor, an' there we prospered. In time the
little village where we went became a town, an' strangers an' new
families kept movin' in. Milly was the belle them days. I can see
her now, a little girl no bigger 'n a bird, an' as pretty. She
had the finest eyes, dark blue-black when she was excited, an'
beautiful all the time. You remember Milly's eyes! An' she had
light-brown hair with streaks of gold, an' a mouth that every
feller wanted to kiss.
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