Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/43

in a mad, whirlwind game. Born for a cerebral life and the peaceful happiness of home, with no adventure in his soul, he was forced into the position of leader of a fighting faction in a bloody vendetta on a swashbuckling and lawless frontier.

Mrs. McSween was an entirely different kind of character. She was a good Christian but not of the meek and lowly type; militant rather; touched with the spirit of the old Covenanters of Presbyterianism's fighting, moss-trooper days. When her husband had attained eminence as a lawyer in Lincoln, he often had to ride on long journeys to distant towns to try a case in court. Always on these trips the good man carried his Bible in his saddlebags and no matter how hard the day's ride or wearying the day's work, he was never too tired to read a chapter and then kneel down and say his prayers before he went to bed. This met with his wife's whole-hearted approval.

"But," she urged, "if you take your Bible in one pocket of your saddlebags, carry a six-shooter in the other. And if any man attempts to smite you on the right cheek, don't lose time turning the left to him, but get out your gun and be sure to shoot first."

"Why should I carry a gun?" replied the mild McSween. "I cannot conceive of any circumstances which would lead me to take the life of a fellow man."

If McSween was an idealist and dreamer, his wife was intensely practical. She saw life clearly through the medium of sharp eyes and a shrewd brain. There was in her the quality of Ithuriel's spear at whose touch sham and fraud and deceit stood revealed in their naked truth. She had no illusions regarding the men about her. She had lived in Lincoln but a little while before she saw through Murphy's veneer of friendship and knew him for