She stared as if he had lost his senses.
“Go wher’? Go how? I ain’t got no folks, mister—I ain’t got no place to go—I ain’t got no money—I ain’t got nawthin’. I ain’t never been nowheres—wha’d I do outside o’ the Traps? An’ Snake, he’d kill me sure’s shootin’, he would. ’Course, if I had some silver or somethin’—but I ain’t got none. ’Less’n ye want to take me out with ye——”
“No, I don’t,” he broke in bluntly. “But you can get work in plenty of places outside where he never would bother you.”
“I can’t!” she disputed, drawing back. “Them that’s borned into the Traps lives into the Traps an’ dies into the Traps. Ther’ ain’t no place for us outside.”
“All right. That doesn’t match very well with what you said about leaving, but never mind. How did you and Snake make out that day about—er—the bridge?”
A slow smile spread across her face, revealing anew the gap in her teeth.
“Oh, we got ’long all right—I done what ye told me. He’d hearn ’bout it, but when he come at me I cracked him good with the sadiron an’ jumped onto him ’bout them Oakses. It kinder took the tuck outen him. But”—her smile faded and her face turned hard—“that red-head o’ Nat’s better leave my man ’lone! Fust thing she knows I’ll—wal, she better look out, tha’s all!”
“What’s that? Why, you’re crazy! She hates the sight of him. Don’t you start any trouble with her, or you’ll be mighty sorry. And what’s more, you can tell your man that unless he lets her alone he’ll run into something hard—the same thing that hit him on Dickie Barre awhile ago. She belongs to——”
The next word on his tongue was “Steve,” with more words to follow. But his habitual avoidance of that name suddenly stopped his speech. She grinned sneeringly, interpreting his abrupt silence according to her lights.
“She does, hey? Then ye better take her into yer own house an’ watch her. Me an’ Snake don’t git ’long none too well, but no red-headed catamount like her is a-goin’ to git him. He was down ther’ last night late, I know he was—he never tells me nawthin’, but I ain’t simple, an’ I know. He come back ’way ’long late, an’ he hadn’t been a-drinkin’, an’ if he ain’t drinkin’ to Oaks’s what’s he a-doin’ ther’? He’s——”