“Papa,” she observed interrogatively, “I have always known you were a hospitable soul, but I never dreamed a house of yours would ever prove shelter for an outlawed cutthroat. Upon my word, if I were a man I should be tempted to collect the bounty on this human wolf. There is a bounty. See?”
She fumbled in a pocket of the short, fur-edged jacket she wore, and presently drew forth a folded paper.
“Yes, surely there is a bounty,” she went on maliciously, holding the paper broadside to the sputtering candles. “Not a great one, to be sure, but more than he is worth. Five hundred dollars for the body, dead or alive, of George Brown, alias Slowfoot George. Height, weight, color of eyes, certain marks and scars—to a dot. Also an appalling list of crimes. Have you no shred or atom of a decent impulse left”—she addressed Barreau directly, her tone level, stingingly contemptuous—“that you persist in thrusting yourself upon people after they have seen the sheep’s clothing stripped from your degenerate shoulders?”
Barreau met her gaze squarely and answered her in her own tone.
“I am here,” he said, “because I choose to be here. Montell pere can tell you why.”
“Now, now Jessie,” Montell cut in pacifically. “This ain’t St. Louis. If George is in trouble, I don’t know as any one has a better right to help him than me. You don’t want to be always ridin’ that high hoss of yours. This country ain’t peopled with little tin gods, as I’ve told you many a time. You’d better go back to the house. I’ll be there pretty quick.”
“Indeed, I imagine I could hardly be in worse company,” she declared. “So I will quit it, forthwith. It was not of my seeking. Better keep an eye on your goods, papa.”
With that she was gone, leaving the three of us staring at each other, Montell a bit apprehensive, it seemed to me. Barreau was first to find his voice.
“I would advise you to get your trail outfit in readiness to-night,” he told Montell bluntly, “and start south in the morning. Otherwise I will give no guarantee of peace and good will in this camp. I can’t stand much of that sort of thing.”
Montell seemed to consider this. If he felt any uneasiness over the implied threat he maintained an undisturbed front. Hunched on the stool like a great toad, one fat hand on each knee, his puffy eyelids blinking with automatic regularity, he regarded Barreau in thoughtful silence.