“’Twas to see about buyin’ some blooded stock for the ranch. At least, so her ladyship informed me. But that’s nae more than one of her lies, I’m thinkin’.”
“What did she say, Whinnie?” I demanded, doing my best to keep cool.
“Naethin’,” was Whinnie’s grim retort. “’Twas me did the sayin’!”
“What did you say?” I asked, disturbed by the none too gentle look on his face.
“What was needed to be said,” that old sour-dough with the lack-luster eyes quietly informed me.
“What did you say?” I repeated, with a quavery feeling just under my floating ribs, alarmed at the after-light of audacity that still rested on his face, like wine-glow on a rocky mountain-tip.
“I said,” Whinstane Sandy informed me with his old shoulders thrust back and his stubby forefinger pointed to within a few inches of my nose, “I said that I kenned her and her kind well, havin’ watched the likes o’ her ridden out o’ Dawson City on a rail more times than once. I said that she was naethin’ but a wanton”—only this was not the word Whinnie used—“a wanton o’ Babylon and a temptress o’ men and a corrupter o’ homes out o’ her time and place, bein’ naught but a soft shinin’ thing that was a mockery to the guid God who made her and a blight to the face o’ the open prairie that she was foulin’ with her presence. I said that she’d brought shame and sorrow to a home that had been filled with happiness until she crept into it like the serpent o’ hell she was, and seein’ she’d come into a lonely land where the people have the trick o’ tryin’ their own cases after their own way and takin’ when need be justice into their own hands, she’d have one week, one week o’ seven days and no more, to gather up what belonged to her and take herself back to the cities o’ shame where she’d find more o’ her kind. And if she was not disposed to hearken a friendly and timely word such as I was givin’ her, I said, she’d see herself taken out o’ her home, and her hoorish body stripped to the skin, and then tarred and feathered, and ridden on the cap-rail of a corral-gate out of a settlement that had small taste for her company!”
“Whinnie!” I gasped, sitting down out of sheer weakness, “you didn’t say that?”
“I said it,” was Whinnie’s laconic retort.
“But what right had you to—”