Part 16 (1/2)
”An unprejudiced onlooker might say that you have made me very welcome.”
”Mr. Winton! Is that generous?”
”No; perhaps it is hardly just. Because I counted the cost and have paid the price open-eyed. You may remember that I told you that first evening I should come as often as I dared. I knew then, what I have known all along: that it was a part of your uncle's plan to delay my work.”
”His and mine, you mean; only you are too kind--or not quite brave enough--to say so.”
”Yours? Never! If I could believe you capable of such a thing--”
”You may believe it,” she broke in. ”It was I who suggested it.”
He drew a deep breath, and she heard his teeth come together with a click. It was enough to try the faith of the loyalest lover: it tried his sorely. Yet he scarcely needed her low-voiced, ”Don't you despise me as I deserve, now?” to make him love her all the more.
”Indeed, I don't. Resentment and love can hardly find room in the same heart at the same time, and I have said that I love you,” he rejoined quickly.
She went silent at that, and when she spoke again the listening Jastrow tuned his ear afresh to lose no word.
”As I have confessed, I suggested it: it was just after I had seen your men and the sheriff's ready to fly at one another's throats. I was miserably afraid, and I asked Uncle Somerville if he could not make terms with you in some other way. I didn't mean--”
He made haste to help her.
”Please don't try to defend your motive to me; it is wholly unnecessary. It is more than enough for me to know that you were anxious about my safety.”
But she would not let him have the crumb of comfort undisputed.
”There were other lives involved besides yours. I didn't say I was specially afraid for you, did I?”
”No, but you meant it. And I thought afterward that I should have given you a hint in some way, though the way didn't offer at the time.
There was no danger of bloodshed. I knew--we all knew--that Deckert wouldn't go to extremities with the small force he had.”
”Then it was only a--a--”
”A bluff,” he said, supplying the word. ”If I had believed there was the slightest possibility of a fight, I should have made my men take to the woods rather than let you witness it.”
”You shouldn't have let me waste my sympathy,” she protested reproachfully.
”I'm sorry; truly, I am. And you have been wasting it in another direction as well. To-night will see the shale-slide conquered definitely, I hope, and three more days of good weather will send us into the Carbonate yards.”
She broke in upon him with a little cry of impatient despair.
”That shows how unwary you have been! Tell me: is there not a little valley just above here--an open place where your railroad and Uncle Somerville's run side by side?”
”Yes, it is a mile this side of the canyon head. What about it?”
”How long is it since you have been up there?” she queried.
Winton stopped to think. ”I don't know--a week, possibly.”
”Yet if you had not been coming here every evening, you or Mr. Adams would have found time to go--to watch every possible chance of interference, wouldn't you?”
”Perhaps. That was one of the risks I took, a part of the price-paying I spoke of. If anything had happened, I should still be unrepentant.”