“You don’t have to tell me what a grand character she is, Kid. I know all about that. She’s righter than April rain. If you knew half what I know about her you’d have put a couple of slugs into Gold Tooth yourself. You probably thought I smoked him off because I was full of ‘Hall’ (alcohol) and wanted to cut some crazy caper. I croaked him because he was slandering the best woman that ever stood in two shoes. I’m not lookin’ for a chance to kill anybody. I got my belly full of that in the war, an’ that ain’t all. No matter what they say, dead men do tell tales. Robbery and burglary are soon forgotten and outlawed, but when you leave a dead man behind you they’ve got the balance of your life to catch you and hang you. A couple of those bums could go into the Salvation Army ten years from now and get religion and hang me.

“I’ve packed a gun for thirty years, and every time I fired it I was in the wrong except, maybe, when I let that Gold Tooth have it. That’s because my business is wrong. But it don’t include murder and I won’t travel with anybody that deliberately shoots people.