“I don’t seem to rightly know,” said pa, with his slowest drawl.
“Where’s your old woman, then?”
“Well, I don’t know that, neither.”
“Where one is, the other is,” cried the woman. “She’s stole that girl, that’s what she’s done.”
“She’d have hard work a-stealing her,” objected Pa McBirney, “when she don’t belong to no one.”
“You’ll find out whether she belongs to anyone or not,” Sisson cried, shaking his fist at pa. “You can’t come it over us that way. We told you that you couldn’t have the girl and we mean it.”
“Well,” said pa in his most reasonable voice, “I hain’t took the girl.”
“Your wife has, and that’s the same thing. And you’ll have to give her up or there’ll be trouble.”
“What my wife does and what I do are two different things,” pa went on teasingly. “I’m telling you the truth when I say I don’t know where them women folks has gone.”
Sisson strode into the room at that, trembling with rage, and as he did so, in at the rear door of the room lounged William Sabin, one of the mountaineers, and behind him Tom Williams and after him Dick Bab. Jim thought he saw other forms looming up in the darkness without.