Just living along twenty years one day after another, all by your own self, and never--never----" His voice trailed off faintly, and he left the sentence unfinished.
Wid Gardner completed it for him.
"And never having a woman around ?" said he.
"Ain't it the truth ?" said Sim Gage suddenly.

His eyes ran furtively around the room in which they sat, taking in, without noting or feeling, the unutterable squalor of the place.
"Well," said his friend after a time, rising, "it'd be a fine place to fetch a woman to, wouldn't it?
But now I got to be going--I got my chores to do." "What's your hurry, Wid ?" complained the occupant of the cabin.
"Cow'll wait." "Yours might," said the other sententiously.

As he spoke he was making his way to the door.
The sun was sinking now behind the range, and as he stood for a moment looking toward the west, he might himself have been seen to be a man of some stature, rugged and bronzed, with scores of wrinkles on his leathery cheeks.

His garb was the rude one of the West, or rather of that remnant of the Old West which has been consigned to the dry farmers and hay ranchers in these modern polyglot days.
Sim Gage, the man who followed him out and stood for a time in the unsparing brilliance of the evening sunlight, did not compare too well with his friend.

He was a man of absolutely no presence, utterly lacking attractiveness.