"Almost, sir," he repeated. "I almost regret it."
"Then go back—leave us—report us dead!" I broke out, savagely. It was moments before I could accept this old life again offered me.
"She is a splendid girl, a noble being," I said to him, slowly, at last. "She saved me when I was sick and unable to travel. There is nothing I could do that would pay the debt I owe to her. She is a noble woman, a princess among women, body and soul."
"She is like her mother," said he, quietly. "She was too good for this. Sir, you have done my family a grievous wrong. You have ruined my daughter's life."
Now at last I could talk. I struck my hand hard on his shoulder and looked him full in the eye. "Colonel Meriwether," I said to him, "I am ashamed of you."
"What do you mean?" He frowned sternly and shook off my hand.
"I brought her through," I said, "and if it would do any good, I would lie down here and die for her. If what I say is not true, draw up your men for a firing squad and let us end it. I don't care to go back to Laramie."
"What good would that do?" said he. "It's the girl's name that's compromised, man! Why, the news of this is all over the country—the wires have carried it both sides of the mountains; the papers are full of it in the East. You have been gone nearly three months together, and all the world knows it. Don't you suppose all the world will talk? Did I not see—" he motioned his hand toward our encampment.
He babbled of such things, small, unimportant, to me, late from large things in life. I interrupted long enough to tell him briefly of our journey, of our hardships, of what we had gone through, of how my sickness had rendered it impossible for us to return at once, of how we had wandered, with what little judgment remained to us, how we had lived in the meantime.
He shook his head. "I know men," said he.