Morgan shook his head. "Two weeks ago," he said, "the whole thing was a sheer impossibility.... Now anything is possible."
Boone's mind had flashed back to McCalloway's prophecy.... "When that message of merging and common cause comes, it will come not on the wings of peace but belched from the mouths of guns—riding the gales of war."
"You are tired and hot," he found himself saying. "Let's go inside."
Later the mountain man reminded his guest: "But you came on another errand. What was it?"
Morgan, who had been seated, rose and paced the floor with his mouth tight drawn, and then stopping before his host, he broke out bluntly: "Once before, Boone, we talked about her. Now we must do it again."
Boone's shoulders stiffened, and his face froze into an unresponsive reserve. Even with McCalloway he had not been able to discuss Anne, and with Morgan it was impossible.
"Morgan," he answered very deliberately and guardedly, "it was Anne's wish to eliminate me from her scheme of things. To that wish I bowed, and what is sealed must remain sealed. In all candour—I can't talk of her."
"Can't talk of her!" Through the strained composure of Morgan's manner darted a flash of the old electric force. "When she may be suffering actual hunger, and you might help! Can you afford to say you can't talk of her?"
"Hunger? Help?" Boone's voice was one of deadly tenseness. "My God, man, don't bait me with words like that unless you mean them—and, if you do, don't waste time!"
For the first time the mountain man learned how Anne had burned her bridges behind her and disappeared from her own world; how so resourceful a lawyer as Morgan, employing every agency at his command, had failed to learn anything of her or her circumstances.