I was too gentle.

Even so, I reckon I'd have won out only for another man.
Dan Bennett was his name--the kind that dumb animals hate, and--well, that takes his measure.

His range adjoined mine, and, though I'd never seen him, I heard stories now and then--the sort of tales you can't tell to a good woman; so it worried me when I heard of his attentions to this girl.

Still, I thought she'd surely find him out and recognize the kind of fellow he was; but, Lord! a woman, can't tell a man from a dog, and there wasn't any one to warn her.

There were plenty of women who knew him, but they were the ones who flew by night, while she lived in the sunshine; and women of that kind don't make complaint, anyhow.
"This Bennett came from the town below, where he ran a saloon and a brace game or two; but being as he rode into our camp and out again in the night, and as I didn't drink nor listen to the music of the little rolling ball, why, we never met, even after he began coming to Chandon.
Understand, I wasn't too good for those amusements; I just didn't happen to hanker after them, for I was living with the image of the little school-ma'am in my mind, and that destroyed what bad habits I'd formed.
"It was along in the early spring that she began to see I had notions about her, but my damned backwardness wouldn't let me speak, and, in addition, I was getting closer to ore every shot at the mine, and was holding off until I could lay both myself and my goldmine at her feet, and ask her to take the two of us, so if one didn't pan out the other might.