“Yes!—it WAS that poor Chet Brooks, sure! I heard that he was killed at Snake River. It was just like him to rush in and get killed the first pop! And all for nothing, too,—pure foolishness!”
Shocked, yet relieved, but uneasy under both sensations, Courtland went on blindly:
“But he was not the only one, Miss Dows. There was another man picked up who also had your picture.”
“Yes—Joyce Masterton. They sent it to me. But you didn't kill HIM, too?”
“I don't know that I personally killed either,” he said a little coldly. He paused, and continued with a gravity which he could not help feeling very inconsistent and even ludicrous: “They were brave men, Miss Dows.”
“To have worn my picture?” said Miss Sally brightly.
“To have THOUGHT they had so much to live for, and yet to have willingly laid down their lives for what they believed was right.”
“Yo' didn't go huntin' me for three years to tell ME, a So'th'n girl, that So'th'n men know how to fight, did yo', co'nnle?” returned the young lady, with the slightest lifting of her head and drooping of her blue-veined lids in a divine hauteur. “They were always ready enough for that, even among themselves. It was much easier for these pooah boys to fight a thing out than think it out, or work it out. Yo' folks in the No'th learned to do all three; that's where you got the grip on us. Yo' look surprised, co'nnle.”
“I didn't expect you would look at it—quite in—in—that way,” said Courtland awkwardly.
“I am sorry I disappointed yo' after yo' 'd taken such a heap o' trouble,” returned the young lady with a puzzling assumption of humility as she rose and smoothed out her skirts, “but I couldn't know exactly what yo' might be expecting after three years; if I HAD, I might have put on mo'ning.” She stopped and adjusted a straying tendril of her hair with the sharp corner of the dead man's letter. “But I thank yo', all the same, co'nnle. It was real good in yo' to think of toting these things over here.” And she held out her hand frankly.