“He call it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing. Pete say it is much. It is big debt. Some day Pete pay.”
There was deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed; the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes in the fulness of its power.
Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty. She was afraid to ask more, lest she should be shortly rebuffed, and lose her opportunity. But Pete was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush coming into her face again. Had he guessed––something––already in her manner, in her impulsive questions? More likely it was the charm that, for once unconsciously, she wielded––the elusive charm of woman that makes men want to tell, without the asking.
“You like to hear?” Pete said; and her heart leaped.
“Oh, please!”
And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected 70 something romantic, something ennobling and fine. And it was only a barroom brawl, though Philip was not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in the reeking border saloon; and afterwards in the street; and the Indian almost done for, bleeding from a dozen wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the fracas: “No, I’m damned if you do! Five to one, and greasers at that!” And Philip Haig had jumped from his horse, and plunged into the mêlée, disdaining to draw his gun on greasers. Smash! Bang! went his fists, front and right and left.
Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd sheep no more on the plains of Conejos. The others fled. Then Haig, despite the knife-wound in his face, grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up behind him on his horse.
“Quick, Indian!” he cried. “This town’s full of greasers. You’ve got no chance here.”
And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian drooping on Haig’s back; and a doctor of Haig’s acquaintance, who sheltered and cured the silent savage. And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to Haig’s ranch, and remained there, despite Haig’s protests that he did not need another hand.
“Pete stay until big debt is paid,” said the Indian solemnly. And then, with a straight look into Marion’s eyes, “You ought tell Huntington he is damn fool.”