Part 109 (2/2)
”You wouldn't have left me--if I'd had my gun.”
The Boy remembered that he had more than suspected that at the time, but the impression had by-and-by waxed dim. It was too utterly unlike the Colonel--a thing dreamed. He had grown as ashamed of the dream as of the thing he knew was true. The egotism of memory absorbed itself in the part he himself had played--that other, an evil fancy born of an evil time. And here was the Colonel saying it was true. The Boy dropped his eyes. It had all happened in the night. There was something in the naked truth too ghastly for the day. But the Colonel went on in a harsh whisper:
”I looked round for my gun; if I'd found it I'd have left you behind.”
And the Boy kept looking down at Nig, and the birds sang, and the locust whirred, and the hot sun filled the tent as high-tide flushes a sea-cave.
”You've been a little hard on me, Boy, bringin' it up like this--remindin' me--I wouldn't have gone on myself, and makin' me admit----”
”No, no, Colonel.”
”Makin' me admit that before I would have let you go on I'd have shot you!”
”Colonel!” He loosed his hold of Nig.
”I rather reckon I owe you my life--and something else besides”--the Colonel laid one hand on the thin shoulder where the pack-strap pressed, and closed the other hand tight over his pardner's right--”and I hadn't meant even to thank you neither.”
”Don't, for the Lord's sake, don't!” said the younger, and neither dared look at the other.
A scratching on the canvas, the Northern knock at the door.
”You fellers sound awake?”
A woman's voice. Under his breath, ”Who the devil's that?” inquired the Colonel, brus.h.i.+ng his hand over his eyes. Before he got across the tent Maudie had pushed the flap aside and put in her head.
”h.e.l.lo!”
”h.e.l.l-o! How d'e do?”
He shook hands, and the younger man nodded, ”h.e.l.lo.”
”When did you come to town?” asked the Colonel mendaciously.
”Why, nearly three weeks ago, on the Weare. Heard you had skipped out to Sulphur with MacCann. I had some business out that way, so that's where I been.”
”Have some breakfast, won't you--dinner, I mean?”
”I put that job through at the Road House. Got to rustle around now and get my tent up. Where's a good place?”
”Well, I--I hardly know. Goin' to stay some time?”
”Depends.”
The Boy slipped off his pack.
”They've got rooms at the Gold Belt,” he said.
”You mean that Dance Hall up at the Forks?”
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