“That’s sure right.” He took up the thread again.
“It makes me think of a game I played once at a party I went to, when I was a kid, back in the states. They had a big, round paper apple fixed up, with something in it for each of us; and we each had a string given us to follow up till we came to the end and each found what belonged to him. Ever see anything like that?”
Mrs. Hallard nodded.
“They worked a game o’ that sort once at some Christmas doin’s where I was raised. Did you ever think o’ me goin’ to Sunday School?” she asked, with a bitter little laugh.
“Sure I did.” Gard went on with his simile. “A man’s got to hold on to his own string,” he said. “And follow it up till he gets to the core of the apple. He’ll find his own share there. This Westcott, he’s trying to haul on other folkses’ lines, as well’s his own, and that gets things in a mix-up. We’ve got to try and make him play the thing right; but it ain’t our party, and therefore it ain’t our job to throw him out of the game altogether.”
Mrs. Hallard’s brows were knit in the effort to follow. She had not herself learned, as yet, to lean upon the logic of events, and vengeance was a part of her own theory of life. Then, because she seemed to find no thoroughfare through the subject, she turned abruptly away from it.
“I met up with your Miss Helen Anderson yesterday,” she said, suddenly.
The light in Gard’s face was revealing, but he merely stood, expectant, until she had told him the whole of the encounter at Old Joe Papago’s, even to Helen’s proffer of friendship.
“Bless her!” the man murmured, with face illumined. “Ain’t she a brick, though?”
“She’s better ’n a brick,” said Kate Hallard, promptly. “She’s a real woman, with a lovin’ honest heart. Look here, Mr. Gabriel Gard! Be you goin’ to stand round with your quirt in your hand, while that there Westcott devil rides off the range with her?”