“Well, I never!” she said with amazement, when she could find words.
Mary Ann drew her tall figure up and her big eyes flashed.
“The other day when Mr. Simpson and Mr. Watson came home here half killed from what they said was a fallin’ tree you believed them, and I didn’t open my mouth,” said the girl.
“And why shouldn’t I believe them?” snorted the widow. “Why shouldn’t I? Didn’t poor Mr. Watson have an arm in a sling and wasn’t he that bruised he couldn’t move without groanin’? And Mr. Simpson, poor man, didn’t he have the awfulest pair of eyes you ever did see in a head? Didn’t that godly man, Mr. Smythe, who was here with me all afternoon, believe ’em?”
“Fallin’ trees don’t use people up just that way,” said Mary Ann slowly. “No, ma, I’ll tell you just what kind of a tree fell on them fellers. It was Bill Paisley. They thought they would try some sharp wort on the Bushwhackers, and Bill——” The girl’s face flushed and her bosom heaved. “—Bill was there and, of course, could whip a dozen excuses like those two. And he did do it, too.”
The widow sat down on a stool, her swarthy face a picture.
“And do you mean to say that them two men went over there to make trouble?” she asked blankly.
Mary Ann nodded.
“What for?”
“I don’t know—yet.”