I am not presuming, nor taking advantage of the accident which has placed us in this peculiar position, but I have been a trooper out here now a long while, stationed at little isolated frontier posts, riding the great plains, doing the little routine duties of soldiering.

I have n't spoken to a decent woman on terms of social equality for two years; I 've looked at a few from a distance and taken orders from them.

But they have glanced through me as though I were something inanimate instead of a man.

I saved an officer's life once down there," and he pointed into the southeast, "and his wife thanked me as though it were a disagreeable duty.

I reckon you don't understand, but I don't like the word gratitude." "But I do understand," and she stretched out her hand to him across the opened haversack.