He was a manly man enough, in a place where weak men were rare.

The one most vitally concerned in all the population of Heart's Desire, he was now the one least visibly affected.

All the rest of the settlement, suddenly smitten by the news that the stage was coming with Eastern Capital and a live Woman, had hastened under cover in search of coats and neckties.
Dan Anderson sat out on the street just as he had been, and watched the purple mysteries dropping on the mountains, and waited grimly for that which was to come to him.

True, there was the slight moisture on his brow and on his under lip, but otherwise his agitation displayed itself only in an occasional exuberance of metaphor.
For my own part, I remained unreconciled to these impending events.
"What will you do ?" I asked Dan Anderson bitterly, "now that you've been ass enough to allow this girl to come on down in here?
You'll have some one killed in this town before long.

Besides, where can a white girl live in this place?
There's not a bedspread or a linen sheet in the whole town." "You talk like a chambermaid," said Dan Anderson, scornfully.