I know her and I know her type.

She'll never come out to the table tonight--nor tomorrow, either.

I know!" In fact, he knew a good deal too much about girls and women also, did Wilbur, and that was why he rode the long trails of the mountain-desert with Boone and his men.

Far south and east in the Bahamas a great mansion stood vacant because he was gone, and the dust lay thick on the carpets and powdered the curtains and tapestries with a common gray.
He had built it and furnished it for a woman he loved, and afterward for her sake he had killed a man and fled from a posse and escaped in the steerage of a west-bound ship.

Still the law followed him, and he kept on west and west until he reached the mountain-desert, which thinks nothing of swallowing men and their reputations.
There he was safe, but someday he would see some woman smile, catch the glimmer of some eye, and throw safety away to ride after her.
It was a weakness, but what made a tragic figure of handsome Dick Wilbur was that he knew his weakness and sat still and let fate walk up and overtake him.
Yet Pierre le Rouge answered this man of sorrowful wisdom: "In my part of the country men say: 'If you would speak of women let money talk for you.'" And he placed a gold piece on the table.
"She will come out to the supper table." "She will not," smiled Wilbur, and covered the coin.