“I'm going out to the gate—I want to see Jake Bondy. He's coming up the coulee,” he said. “I won't be far. Poor little girl—poor little pal, I wish I could help you.” He touched his lips to her hair, so lightly she could not feel it, and left her.
At the gate he met, not the sheriff, who was riding slowly, and had just passed through the field gate, but Arline and Hank, rattling up in the Hawley buck-board.
“Thank the good Lord!” he exclaimed when he helped her from the rig. “I never was so glad to see anybody in my life. Go on in—she's in there crying her heart out. Man's dead—the sheriff shot him in the river—oh, there's been hell to pay out here!”
“My heavens above!” Arline stared up at him while she grasped the significance of his words. “I knowed he'd hit for here—I followed right out as quick as Hank could hitch up the team. Did you hear about Fred—”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know all about it!” Kent was guilty of pulling her through the gate, and then pushing her toward the house. “You go and do something for that poor girl. Pack her up and take her to town as quick as God'll let you. There's been misery enough for her out here to kill a dozen women.”
He watched until she had reached the porch, and then swung back to Hank, sitting calmly in the buckboard, with the lines gripped between his knees while he filled his pipe.
“I can take care of the man's side of this business, fast enough,” Kent confessed whimsically, “but there's some things it takes a woman to handle.” He glanced again over his shoulder, gave a huge sigh of relief when he glimpsed Arline's thin face as she passed the window and knelt beside the couch, and turned with a lighter heart to meet the sheriff.