“Well, us Bushwhackers are goin’ to hang together,” said Boy. “We own over two thousand acres of the best timber in Ontario. We can keep it by fightin’. If we don’t fight——”
He turned and walked toward the door.
“Boy,” warned the elder man, “don’t you do anythin’ you’ll be sorry for. Just forget all about Watson and Hallibut for a time, ’cause I want to tell how we all come to be in this place we love so much.
“Before you were born, Boy, I lived in the States; ranched it in Arizona. And there was a man down there who as much as stole everythin’ I had in the world. It was because of a woman that he lived to enjoy it all for a time. That woman was his wife, your ma’s more’n friend, little Glossie’s mother.”
Boy looked up quickly, then dropped his head again.
“That woman was a lot to me and your mother. She was a lady, every inch of her, and educated, too. She taught your ma to be the scholar she is, and she was the kindest-hearted, sweetest woman that could be found in the world. Seems as she run off from a fine home and rich people to marry that man. He was a bad ’un, her man; bad in every way a man can be bad, I guess. He drank and he abused her——”
Big McTavish caught his breath hard.
“ ’Course,” he went on, “we might have killed him—lots of us there would have done more’n that for his wife. But you see that woman stuck to him in spite of all he did to make her life hell; so we let him alone. Your ma worshiped her, or as near it as mortal can worship mortal, and they were a lot together. Women are not very plentiful on the Plains, Boy. When I lost everythin’ to her husband, through his cheatin’ me on a deal, and made up my mind to quit ranchin’ and strike for some new country, she promised us that after her baby was born she’d come to us, no matter where we might be. You see it had come to such a pass that she simply couldn’t live with that man no longer.”
The big man paused to light his pipe, and Boy asked:
“Did she come?”