“Your mother calls you a brat?” he slowly asked then.
“Brat—and lots of other things,” she nodded. “And now I’ve got to git home. I’ll git a good hidin’, I shouldn’t wonder, but I won’t stay here——”
“You will!” came his incisive contradiction. “You’ll stay here until that foot is doctored and you’ve had some food. Sit down!”
At the crisp crackle of his command she eyed him in surprised defiance. Her chin lifted, and she took a combative step on the hurt foot. Pallor and pain swept again across her face, and she staggered. He promptly picked her up, squirming and resisting; set her down on the blankets, and inexorably held her there. Then, his eyes boring into hers, he spoke in cool determination.
“Behave yourself. Listen to me.
“You’re not going away until I say so. I’ll not say so until you’re better able to travel. You won’t be able to travel until that ankle is reduced. It won’t be reduced until I’ve worked on it. That’s all there is to that.
“Now about me. I’m no detective. I am Douglas Hampton, a rover, a drifter, with no home and no folks. I’ve been in quite a few places, done quite a few things; but I’ve never been a detective and I don’t intend to be one. My last job was as reporter on a New York newspaper, and I lasted almost a year. Got fired last week because the city editor rode me too hard and I sat him down in his own waste-basket. Now I’m in here because I feel like roughing it awhile and somebody told me it was rough up here in the Shawangunks.
“I intended to stay here only a day or two and then ramble along, stopping again wherever I found something that hit my fancy. But now that people around here think they’re going to kick me out—I’ll stay longer. I’m one of those cantankerous chaps who can be coaxed a mile but can’t be kicked an inch. I always kick back.
“As I started to say awhile ago, I don’t know the history of this hole in the hills, but I’m right willing to learn all about it—past and present. And if people around here want to consider me a detective, let ’em. I don’t care what they think. The only reason why I’m telling you who I am is—well, because I feel like it.”
With that he took his hands from her shoulders and straightened up. She made no move to rise again. Steadily she probed his face, and slowly she nodded.