Robin stared. Either she knew what had happened, or her intuition was uncanny. What difference did it make to her?
“How do you know anything has happened?” he countered.
“I don’t know,” she replied slowly. “But I have that sort of feeling. When you came to our car and turned back. Perhaps it was that. I don’t know.”
Robin’s mind worked fast. If word had reached Adam Sutherland and Sutherland discovered he was on that train, old Adam would have an officer at his elbow between stations. He doubted if May would mention his presence. Yet she might. She was frank. Robin couldn’t associate her with deceit or subterfuge. But if he asked her not to mention him she wouldn’t—only he would have to tell her why. And why not? She would learn eventually. Robin felt that he would rather she learned from his own lips. He remembered with a queer glow that she had said: “If there is to be a funeral I hope it will be his.”
“I’m on the dodge,” he said quietly. “Mark Steele jumped me day before yesterday. I killed him. That’s why I backed out of your car. I didn’t want your dad to see me. I’m quittin’ Montana for good.”
He put his hands on his knees and faced her impassively, curious to see how she would take it. A little gleam of admiration warmed him. She had nerve, this slender wisp of a girl. She neither winced nor looked shocked nor did any of the things a woman might reasonably be expected to do when a man calmly informs her that he has taken another man’s life.
“Somehow, I don’t seem to be surprised much, nor horrified, nor sorry,” she murmured at last. “I suppose he crowded you into a corner. But do you have to run? Haven’t you a plea of defense?”
“Not much, as it stands. And I’d need a good one,” he told her soberly. “You see Steele kept diggin’ into me all fall. He wanted me to jump him so that he could kill me. He drove me crazy that day in Big Sandy. I said before twenty men that I’d kill him. The kind of lawyers and the kind of witnesses that would be against me in a trial would cook my goose. There’d only be my word that I had to get him or he would have finished me. This Thatcher was there. He’ll have his own story. He’s just as keen to put me away as Shinin’ Mark was. All things considered I can’t stand trial. I was born free,” he ended a little wistfully, “I’ve lived free and I aim to die that way. I won’t take no chance on lookin’ through bars like a caged wolf for doin’ somethin’ that was forced on me.”
“There is more than Ivy Mayne back of this,” May said slowly. There was a peculiar sort of conviction in her tone.
“Yes,” Robin admitted. “But it don’t do no good to talk about that now. Too late.”