"So they aimed ter lay-way me," she murmured incredulously and Halloway made prompt answer. "Yes, and ye mighty nigh walked right into th'ar dead-fall. Don't ye see now how plum reckless yore plan is? Whar was ye at anyhow?"
The girl impatiently tossed her head. "I fared out a leetle way ter see how ther roads looked," she said. "I wanted ter mek sure that I could get a daybreak start in the morning. I hain't nobody's sugar ner salt that I kain't stir abroad without meltin', be I?"
"We saw that your pack was gone too—and we 'lowed——" began Halloway, but she interrupted him with a curt explanation. "Thet shack war leakin' like a sieve. I didn't aim ter hev all my belongin's mildewed an' rusted—so I left 'em at ther store."
"This crowd kin see ye through without mishap, I reckon. We've done planned hit all out." That contribution came from the giant who seemed to have become general spokesman but the young woman stood silent and absorbed; a delicate pucker between her brows, and the violet pools of her eyes cloud-riffled. At last she announced firmly, "I'm beholden ter all of ye but I've got ter study this matter out by myself. I'll come back hyar in a little spell an' tell ye what decision I've done reached."
"As for getting a daybreak start," Brent observed as she turned away, "You can't get into the bank until it opens."
Once more she had overlooked the unfamiliar complications of financial usage.
Jerry O'Keefe had been lounging with the other recruits of Bud's gathering, looking river-ward until the sound of voices, whose words he could not distinguish, brought him lazily around. As he stood when the first view of Alexander broke on his vision, so he remained—immovable. The low and bantering laughter of his companions for his rapt statuesqueness, fell on deaf ears. His lips parted and his eyes held as under hypnotism.
Jerry stared with a craned neck at Alexander McGivins until slowly his body came round to an easier posture, but upon his steady and unmoving fixity of eye, the rest of him moved as upon an axis. Into the gray-blue irises came a live kindling and with seeming unconsciousness of those about him, he said solemnly, "Afore God, I aims ter wed with thet gal!"
Alexander had strolled outward along a bluff, leaving the town at her back, because she wanted to think without interruption. In her home over yonder across the broken ridges her father might be lying, anxiety ridden—or he might be already dead. An obsession of haste spurred her with the roweling of suspense and with the companionship of her troubled thoughts she walked on and on.
When at length she turned she had decided certain matters, and in the growing dusk she met a man who smilingly accosted her and halted in her path. It was Jase Mallows and she confronted him with a high head and, in remembrance of his swaggering impertinence, spoke imperiously.