“So she waited for word from him all summer, and the other day there came a letter, and the same day she found out that her mother meant for her to marry some young Mexican blood at Muletown. Then she made up her mind to go to Will, although he had told her he couldn’t send for her for another month or two. That night she started off alone in the dark and walked to Muletown. Somebody gave her a ride across the plain and then she walked to Plumas from the Hermosa pass.
“I made up my mind right then and there that I’d yank that young scrub back to Plumas quicker’n hell could singe a cat, but she wouldn’t tell me where he was. And maybe I didn’t have a skin-your-teeth sort of a time gettin’ it out of her! I just tell you that little girl is cute enough to take care of herself most anywhere, and don’t you forget it! I coaxed her and she’d coax back, and I threatened her and she’d come back at me with all the things I’d sworn not to tell, and I wheedled her as Irish as the pigs in Drogheda, and she’d lie back on the pillow and smile at me—and all the time just lookin’ too sweet and pretty and sick—well, it was the hardest job I ever tackled. Boys, I sure reckon that little handful of a girl would have been too many for me and we’d have been palaverin’ yet if she hadn’t gone too weak to talk any more. I saw she was mighty near played out, and I just sicked myself on for all I was worth. I felt ornery enough to go off and get horned by a steer, but I reckoned I sure had to. She gave up at last, when she couldn’t hold out any longer, and agreed to let me see the envelope her letter had come in if I’d kiss the crucifix and swear by a few more saints that I wouldn’t let anybody touch Will, and swear over again on my knees everything I’d promised her before. I finally got through with all the religious doin’s she could think of, and then I lit out for the train. I heard it comin’ when I left French’s house, and I made a run for it, which was why I didn’t tell Judge Harlin where I was goin’. I couldn’t stop to say a word to anybody without missin’ the train and losin’ a day.
“The only clue I had was that he was at Chihuahua, and at work at something, I didn’t know what, and I thought likely he was pasearing around under an assumed name, which he was. I nosed around for two days, layin’ low and keepin’ mighty quiet, and you better guess I made a quick scoot through Juarez, too.”
The others grinned broadly and as Nick stopped to light a fresh cigar Tom said:
“I sure thought, Nick, that you’d never get back alive, for I knew you-all must have gone off some place you’d no business to go alone, and I’d have started off on a blind hunt for you in another day.”
“Well, I run across him by accident on the street one evening, and you ought to have seen him turn white and shaky when I stepped up and spoke to him. The boy’s nerve’s all gone, and you know he used to have the devil’s own grit. You-all saw how he acted when I got him into the court room this afternoon. I reckon it takes all the sand out of a fellow to live in the dark and be all the time afraid something’s goin’ to drop, the way he’s done all summer.
“‘Hullo, Will,’ says I, and then I took pity on him and showed my hand right from the start. But I’d sized him up all in a minute, and I reckoned that would work best anyway. ‘I haven’t got any warrant for you,’ says I, ‘and I don’t mean to arrest you, and I’ve sworn to Amada Garcia not to let any harm happen to you, but I’ve got a proposition I want to talk over with you, if you’ll take me somewheres where we can be private.’ For I didn’t mean to let him out of my sight again until I got him into the court room at Plumas, and I didn’t, neither. He took me to his room and we chinned the thing over for two or three hours. He knew that everybody thought he was dead and that his body had been found, and that Emerson was being tried for his murder. But he’d started out on that lay and he was afraid to go back on it.
“He told me the whole story, on my promise to keep it secret. I told him I’d have to tell it to you-all, because Emerson had the right to know it, and Tommy would be sure to go makin’ some bad break if he didn’t know it, but that I’d give him my word of honor it shouldn’t go outside of us three. He was just gone plum’ crazy on Amada, and one day he was at her house when a justice of the peace from Muletown came along. The old folks were out in the fields and for a good, plump fee the justice married them right then and there. They had no witnesses, and it happened that the justice died in a week—it was old Crowby, from Muletown, you remember him. Will was deathly afraid his father would find it out and be bull roaring mad about it and hist him out of the country, and so he didn’t dare say a word about it, and he made Amada keep it secret, too. Well, the boy’s young, and I reckon that’s some excuse for him, but I’ll be everlastingly horn-spooned if I think his father’s got much reason to be proud of him.
“Then came the day when he stepped to the door and saw that Mexican primo hugging her, and he swore to me that all in a flash he was so wild with anger and jealousy he didn’t know what he was doin’ until he heard the report and the man dropped dead—that he didn’t remember drawin’ or takin’ aim, or anything but just wantin’ to kill. When he cooled down and realized what he had done he was in a regular panic. If he gave himself up the facts about the wedding would have to come out, in order to protect Amada, and then his father would roar, and probably cast him off if he wouldn’t give her up, and if he escaped conviction for the murder the primo’s relatives would be dead sure to get even with him. The only way he could see out of it was to hide the body and skip. The man who was with him—a cow-boy they had just hired who had come out of the mountains to make a stake so he could go prospectin’ again—Bill Frank was his name, and I told him yes, I knew him—well, this man offered to see him out for the stake he’d expected to have to work some time for, and as Will had some money in his clothes they made the bargain and skipped. They changed the clothing and carried the body in their wagon up to the White Sands and buried it. It was them that held you up, Tom, that night last spring, and it was Will Whittaker, in the Mexican’s duds, that you thought was a Mexican, who slunk around in the bushes and held the gun on you part of the time. They had the Mexican’s body in the wagon and they didn’t mean to allow any curiosity about it or about their business, and you’d have dropped dead in your tracks if you’d shown any.”
“I knew that very well all the time I was with ’em,” Tom answered quietly.