The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: The sobered Barker said, simply, "Yes, Lin." He was put to thinking by
these words from the unsuspected inner man.
Out in the Bow Leg country Lin McLean had met a woman with thick, red
cheeks, calling herself by a maiden name; and this was his whole
knowledge of her when he put her one morning astride a Mexican saddle and
took her fifty miles to a magistrate and made her his lawful wife to the
best of his ability and belief. His sage-brush intimates were confident
he would never have done it but for a rival. Racing the rival and beating
him had swept Mr. McLean past his own intentions, and the marriage was an
inadvertence. "He jest bumped into it before he could pull up," they
explained; and this casualty, resulting from Mr. McLean's sporting blood,
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