He tore a sheet from his field book. This is what he wrote:
I shall obey you implicitly, my Alder Liefest. I don't know what it is yet; but I'll not let it make any difference in the fight no matter what it is. I have thought of that seal every day and night since I left you, and all day and all night; and I couldn't have pulled through this trip if I hadn't had that well of memory to drink from. You saved my life, tho' you don't know it. Matthews will tell you: and you saved his too.
Dick. (nth.)
P. S. There's a funny little kid up here, been left by her father in one of the settlers' tents. She's the most pitiable little object I ever saw. I think her father is a drunken tough from Shanty Town. She oughtn't to be left up here alone near such a baby-eater as I am. I wish you'd come up and see about her. If you don't come alone, get Mrs. Williams, or my friend, Matthews.
Calamity went on down the Ridge and Wayland plunged at his mail. On the very top of the pile lay a newspaper in a folder marked with red "Important." Before the pole cat begins operations, he chooses his target. For myself, I think discretion is better than valor in such a case, and you would do well to retreat and let the little genus Mephitis Mephitica infect the air for his own benefit; but Wayland did not know what was coming and tore the paper open and read. Then he flung it from him and stood looking with blazing eyes at the thing on the floor.
"Read it," he said.
The old frontiersman got his glasses laboriously out of the case and began to read. The sun was behind the Holy Cross, and he stood in the door to get the light on the paper. When he had finished and looked round, he saw Wayland sitting crunched forward with his face in his hands.
"Wayland, man," he slapped him twice on the shoulder, "look up, look up at that picture on the wall above y'r bed."
Wayland took his hands from his eyes. The Alpine glow struck through the doorway against the picture on the wall, the picture she had had Calamity bring down surreptitiously and had sent back framed, the picture of the face above the Warrior.
"Man alive, why w'd y' care for the devil's dirt and skunk stench and snake venom, when y' have, when y' have That? She's a—a trump! She's a thoroughbred! Man, y'd know she had th' blood o' Scottish kings and queens in her veins. Y'll no go down to-night, Wayland, when y'r all undone! 'Twould hurt her. A intended tellin' her to-night why A came; but A'll not now! A'll not now! She must not run from this scandal. She must face it down before she goes, but A'll go an' see her father an' come back an' tell y'. Cheer up man! 'Tis part o'the fight."