“Please don't try to defend your motive to me; it is wholly unnecessary. It is more than enough for me to know that you were anxious about my safety.”
But she would not let him have the crumb of comfort undisputed.
“There were other lives involved besides yours. I didn't say I was specially afraid for you, did I?”
“No, but you meant it. And I thought afterward that I should have given you a hint in some way, though the way didn't offer at the time. There was no danger of bloodshed. I knew—we all knew—that Deckert wouldn't go to extremities with the small force he had.”
“Then it was only a—a—”
“A bluff,” he said, supplying the word. “If I had believed there was the slightest possibility of a fight, I should have made my men take to the woods rather than let you witness it.”
“You shouldn't have let me waste my sympathy,” she protested reproachfully.
“I'm sorry; truly, I am. And you have been wasting it in another direction as well. To-night will see the shale-slide conquered definitely, I hope, and three more days of good weather will send us into the Carbonate yards.”
She broke in upon him with a little cry of impatient despair.
“That shows how unwary you have been! Tell me: is there not a little valley just above here—an open place where your railroad and Uncle Somerville's run side by side?”