"Ye ain't never crossed the trail o' that mournful history?"

I professed my ignorance and said:

"They fought?"

"Mister Man," returned Bunt soberly, as one broaching a subject not to
be trifled with, "They sure did. Friendly-like, y'know--like as how two
high-steppin', sassy gents figures out to settle any little strained
relations--friendly-like but considerable keen."

He took a pinch of tobacco from his pouch and a bit of paper and rolled
a cigarette in the twinkling of an eye, using only one hand, in true
Mexican style.

"Now," he said, as he drew the first long puff to the very bottom of the
leathern valves he calls his lungs. "Now, I'm a-goin' for to relate that
same painful proceedin' to you, just so as you kin get a line on the
consumin' and devourin' foolishness o' male humans when they's a woman
in the wind. Woman," said Bunt, wagging his head thoughtfully at the
water, "woman is a weather-breeder. Mister Dixon, they is three things
I'm skeered of. The last two I don't just rightly call to mind at this
moment, but the first is woman. When I meets up with a feemale woman on
my trail, I sheers off some prompt, Mr. Dixon; I sheers off. An'
Hardenberg," he added irrelevantly, "would a-took an' married this
woman, so he would. Yes, an' Strokher would, too."

"Was there another man?" I asked.

"No," said Bunt. Then he began to chuckle behind his mustaches. "Yes,