"It's rotten.

I know it.

A man who backslides on a woman the way I'm goin' to oughta be shot, and if it was anything else--_anything_--I'd keep it to myself.

But you've got to know.

And you can't understand just how rotten it is, either; you haven't ridden in a coach with her during a storm that was blowing the Pacific outa bed, an' you haven't hit the trail with her all the way from Chitina to the Range as I did.