ford at the North Fork.' I sez, 'I believe you, Jackson.' 'It'll git
me some day, Bill, sure,' sez he. I sez, 'Why don't you take the lower
ford?' 'I don't know,' sez he, 'but I can't.' So ever after, when I
met him, he sez, 'That North Fork ain't got me yet.' One day I was in
Sacramento, and up comes Filltree. He sez, 'I've sold out the express
business on account of the North Fork, but it's bound to get me yet,
Bill, sure'; and he laughs. Two weeks after they finds his body below
the ford, whar he tried to cross, comin' down from the Summit way. Folks
said it was foolishness: Tommy, I sez it was Fate! The second day arter
I was changed to the Placerville route, thet woman comes outer the
hotel above the stage-office. Her husband, she said, was lying sick in
Placerville; that's what she said; but it was Fate, Tommy, Fate. Three
months afterward, her husband takes an overdose of morphine for delirium
tremems, and dies. There's folks ez sez she gave it to him, but it's
Fate. A year after that I married her,--Fate, Tommy, Fate!
"I lived with her jest three months," he went on, after a long
breath,--"three months! It ain't much time for a happy man. I've seen
a good deal o' hard life in my day, but there was days in that three
months longer than any day in my life,--days, Tommy, when it was a
toss-up whether I should kill her or she me. But thar, I'm done. You are
a young man, Tommy, and I ain't goin' to tell things thet, old as I am,
three years ago I couldn't have believed."
When at last, with his grim face turned toward the window, he sat
silently with his clinched hands on his knees before him, Islington
asked where his wife was now.
"Ask me no more, my boy,--no more. I've said my say." With a gesture as
of throwing down a pair of reins before him, he rose, and walked to the
window.
"You kin understand, Tommy, why a little trip around the world 'ud do me
good. Ef you can't go with me, well and good. But go I must."
"Not before luncheon, I hope," said a very sweet voice, as Blanche
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