“No—yes—Uncle Hank.”
Hilda moved on with him to the office, where they could speak together without fear of interruption. “There is a reason; that’s why I’m so glad he’s coming over here—again.”
“Again?” Quickly. “Has he ever been at the Sorrers before? Not that I’ve known of.”
Hilda’s eyes never left the anxious face that confronted her as she told, at last, the whole story of her hiding Pearse Masters in the cyclone cellar, of the snatched interview during the drive up with the trail-herd. That was easy. She was glad now to share that with Uncle Hank. But when she came to the part over in New Mexico, the dance at Grainger’s, the picnic on Caliente Creek, she found it harder going. Yet, the bare facts of these things too she got before him, tried to express something of what they meant to her, broke off blushing, and finally finished,
“So you see, he’s The Boy-On-The-Train that I was always telling you about when I was a little girl, Uncle Hank. And when I hid him here on the Three Sorrows—he wasn’t a cattle thief—but if the sheriff had got him that—”
“I see. I see, Pettie.” Hank stood looking down, sorting out this new information. Finally he went on without looking at her:
“What you said in there at the breakfast table, and what you’ve said here to me, does make a good deal of difference. If that’s all so—and, of course, I know it is so, when you tell me it is—what makes you keep on talking like you thought this young man and me might not take to each other? That he should have persuaded you into hiding him here in the Sorrers unbeknownst to me—I ain’t holding that up against him. Must have been but a boy at the time. You was only a little girl, Reckon he was scared. Didn’t know me, and had knowed you and your folks before. I reckon that was all there was to it, wasn’t it?”
“Not—not quite all, Uncle Hank.” Hilda was trembling. Her face burned, her eyes wavered and fell away from his. “He—he did seem to know about you, and—there seemed to be something—something—” her voice failed her. After a moment, she was able to finish, in a husky whisper, “He didn’t feel friendly—to you.”
“Sho!” Uncle Hank looked at her blankly. “Seemed to know me? I’ve been figgerin’ he was a son of the Masters that was part owner of the J I C company out there in Encinal. Rich eastern man, as I recollect it. Them the people?”
“Yes,” said Hilda faintly. “Mr. Masters died just before Pearse came out West—you know—the time I hid him here.”