“Oh, that’s all right. He’ll spend most of his days locked up, ennyhow,” Colty roughly joked.
“He won’t nuther.” She struck at him with an affectation of retaliation. But her face was not jocose, and a tallowy pallor accented the freckles.
“Colty,” she lowered her voice mysteriously, “I have heard shootin’.”
“Naw!” he cried remonstrantly, as if the reluctance to entertain the fact could annul it.
“Whenst on the ruver I heard shootin’,” she declared again.
“Oh, shucks, gal,” he exclaimed. “You couldn’t hear it so fur off.”
“On the water!” she cried, lifting her eyebrows. “The water fetches the sound.”
“He said he wouldn’t shoot,” cried Colty Connover, his lip pendulously drooping. “He said on no account.”
“You b’lieve his gab? Well, you are a softy!” she flung at him. Then, with one end of the apron string in her mouth, she ejaculated murmurously: “I heard shootin’,” looking doubtfully and vaguely over her shoulder.
“Then he’ll swing for it ef he’s killed Ran Ducie. There ain’t a more pop’lar man in the county, nor a better judge of horseflesh.”