Part 80

“Had they quarrelled?” she inquired.

“Oh, no!”

“But--”

“I reckon he loved her very much.”

“Then you’re sure they hadn’t quarrelled?”

“Dead sure, ma’am. He would come back afteh he had played some more of the game.”

“The game?”

“Life, ma’am. Whatever he was a-doin’ in the world of men. That’s a bed-rock piece, ma’am!”

“Well, I don’t see why you think it’s so much better than some of the others.”

“I could sca’cely explain,” answered the man. “But that writer does know something.”

“I am glad they hadn’t quarrelled,” said Molly, thoughtfully. And she began to like having her opinions refuted.

His bandages, becoming a little irksome, had to be shifted, and this turned their discourse from literature to Wyoming; and Molly inquired, had he ever been shot before? Only once, he told her. “I have been lucky in having few fusses,” said he. “I hate them. If a man has to be killed--”

“You never--” broke in Molly. She had started back a little. “Well,” she added hastily, “don’t tell me if--”

“I shouldn’t wonder if I got one of those Indians,” he said quietly. “But I wasn’t waitin’ to see! But I came mighty near doing for a white man that day. He had been hurtin’ a hawss.”

“Hurting?” said Molly.

“Injurin.’ I will not tell yu’ about that. It would hurt yu’ to hear such things. But hawsses--don’t they depend on us? Ain’t they somethin’ like children? I did not lay up the man very bad. He was able to travel ’most right away. Why, you’d have wanted to kill him yourself!”

So the Virginian talked, nor knew what he was doing to the girl. Nor was she aware of what she was receiving from him as he unwittingly spoke himself out to her in these Browning meetings they had each day. But Mrs. Taylor grew pleased. The kindly dame would sometimes cross the road to see if she were needed, and steal away again after a peep at the window. There, inside, among the restored home treasures, sat the two: the rosy alert girl, sweet as she talked or read to him; and he, the grave, half-weak giant among his wraps, watching her.

Of her delayed home visit he never again spoke, either to her or to Mrs. Taylor; and Molly veered aside from any trend of talk she foresaw was leading toward that subject. But in those hours when no visitors came, and he was by himself in the quiet, he would lie often sombrely contemplating the girl’s room, her little dainty knickknacks, her home photographs, all the delicate manifestations of what she came from and what she was. Strength was flowing back into him each day, and Judge Henry’s latest messenger had brought him clothes and mail from Sunk Creek and many inquiries of kindness, and returned taking the news of the cow-puncher’s improvement, and how soon he would be permitted the fresh air. Hence Molly found him waiting in a flannel shirt of highly becoming shade, and with a silk handkerchief knotted round his throat; and he told her it was good to feel respectable again.

She had come to read to him for the allotted time; and she threw around his shoulders the scarlet and black Navajo blanket, striped with its splendid zigzags of barbarity. Thus he half sat, half leaned, languid but at ease. In his lap lay one of the letters brought over by the messenger: and though she was midway in a book that engaged his full attention--DAVID COPPERFIELD--his silence and absent look this morning stopped her, and she accused him of not attending.

“No,” he admitted; “I am thinking of something else.”

She looked at him with that apprehension which he knew.

“It had to come,” said he. “And to-day I see my thoughts straighter than I’ve been up to managing since--since my haid got clear. And now I must say these thoughts--if I can, if I can!” He stopped. His eyes were intent upon her; one hand was gripping the arm of his chair.

“You promised--” trembled Molly.

“I promised you should love me,” he sternly interrupted. “Promised that to myself. I have broken that word.”

She shut DAVID COPPERFIELD mechanically, and grew white.

“Your letter has come to me hyeh,” he continued, gentle again.

“My--” She had forgotten it.

“The letter you wrote to tell me good-by. You wrote it a little while ago--not a month yet, but it’s away and away long gone for me.”