Part 36 (2/2)
”What are they doing there?”
”Waitin' till spring, when they'll fetch their cattle up an' settle there.”
”They want--Lydia--to keep house for them?” The old man writhed.
”Yes, G.o.d's sake, that's it! An' they want Liddy to marry a devil called Borotte, with a thousand cattle or so--Pito the courier told me yesterday. Pito saw her, an' he said she was white like a sheet, an'
called out to him as he went by. Only half a lung I got, an' her boneset and camomile 'd save it for a bit, mebbe--mebbe!”
”It's clear,” said Halby, ”that they trespa.s.sed, and they haven't proved their right to her.”
”Tonnerre, what a thinker!” said Pierre, mocking. Halby did not notice.
His was a solid sense of responsibility.
”She is of age?” he half asked, half mused.
”She's twenty-one,” answered the old man, with difficulty.
”Old enough to set the world right,” suggested Pierre, still mocking.
”She was forced away, she regarded you as her natural protector, she believed you her father: they broke the law,” said the soldier.
”There was Moses, and Solomon, and Caesar, and Socrates, and now...!”
murmured Pierre in a.s.sumed abstraction.
A red spot burned on Halby's high cheekbone for a minute, but he persistently kept his temper.
”I'm expected elsewhere,” he said at last. ”I'm only one man, yet I wish I could go to-day--even alone. But--”
”But you have a heart,” said Pierre. ”How wonderful--a heart! And there's the half a lung, and the boneset and camomile tea, and the blister, and the girl with an eye like a spot of rainbow, and the sacred law in a Remington rifle! Well, well! And to do it in the early morning--to wait in the shelter of the trees till some go to look after the horses, then enter the house, arrest those inside, and lay low for the rest.”
Halby looked over at Pierre astonished. Here was raillery and good advice all in a piece.
”It isn't wise to go alone, for if there's trouble and I should go down, who's to tell the truth? Two could do it; but one--no, it isn't wise, though it would look smart enough.”
”Who said to go alone?” asked Pierre, scrawling on the table with a burnt match.
”I have no men.”
Pierre looked up at the wall.
”Throng has a good Snider there,” he said. ”Bos.h.!.+ Throng can't go.”
The old man coughed and strained.
”If it wasn't--only-half a lung, and I could carry the boneset 'long with us.”
Pierre slid off the table, came to the old man, and, taking him by the arms, pushed him gently into a chair. ”Sit down; don't be a fool, Throng,” he said. Then he turned to Halby: ”You're a magistrate--make me a special constable; I'll go, monsieur le capitaine--of no company.”
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