“Shame on you! Shame on you, every one! How dared you? And I thought–I thought–you were gentlemen!”
With arms tightly folded over her breast, as if to hold back the conflicting emotions within it, her blue eyes flashing, her small foot stamping, she defied and condemned them all.
A little laughter answered her, but this sound died speedily, and awkward glances shifted among the faces of the men. They were sorry to have offended the “Little One,” and to have her indignant with them was a new and unpleasant situation, but they were not in the least degree sorry that they had administered some punishment to the maligner of their master. Most of them would have wished this punishment more severe, but the promise Jessica had exacted from them before this interview had prevented.
One by one, as they had first come upon the scene they retreated from it, though Joe Dean lingered a moment to ask:
“Won’t you come share our breakfast, captain, and so bury the hatchet?”
She sadly shook her head. All her anger left her as suddenly as it had arisen, and there remained in her mind but one thought–there were people in the world who believed her father had been a thief. That was the hard and bitter fact which nothing could soften. The former trouble about the lost title deed, and the probable loss of her home seemed as nothing to this new distress. How was she to face it? How disprove it? How save her beloved mother from ever hearing it?
There came a step beside her and a strong arm about her shoulders. It was Ephraim Marsh; erect, resolute, protecting.
“Take it easy, daughter. It’s you and me together’ll nail this lie on the door of the man who started it. There’s a blue sky up yonder and a solid earth down here. I’m good to trust the one and tread the other for forty miles a day yet, spite of my white head. If I have to travel this old State over its hundred and fifty-six thousand square miles, before I clinch that falsehood, I’ll clinch it, if I live. If I don’t–laws, dearie, I’m in the same poor box myself. There’s them that believe me a–you know the word. Even your mother––”
“No, Ephraim! She never believed you anything but the splendid man you are.”
“Last night, no shooting, and––”