"You won't believe it, but it's so—dash me 'n' dash drunkards one and all."
"I hear, though," returned Kate, only because in her distress of mind she could think of nothing else to say, "that Tom Stone has stopped drinking."
"That man," was Bradley's retort, and he kept his tremulous voice still far down in his throat, "is mean enough to do any d—d thing."
"You used to be sheriff?"
"Yes. And when I was sheriff, Kate, I found out it was better to trust an honest man turned thief than a thief turned honest man."
Kate, listening to his halting maunderings, hardly heeded them. She heard in her troubled ears the rush of mad waters; phantom voices cracked again in pistoled oaths at the horses, the fear of sudden death clutched at her heart, and in the dreadful dark a powerful arm caught her again and drew her, helpless, out of an engulfing flood.
She got out of doors. The sunshine, clear and calm, belied the possibility of a night such as Bradley's words had summoned. "Dead," she kept saying to herself. Laramie had been sure he would get out of the creek. What could it mean?
She went back to the kitchen where Bradley, eating supper, had switched from his long-winded topic. Kate had to question him: "What was the matter with Abe? When did he die?" she asked, as unconcernedly as she could.
There was little satisfaction in Bradley's slow, formal answer: "Some's got it one way and some's got it another, Kate. I can't rightly say what ailded him or when he died 'n' I guess nobody else can, f'r sure. Some says he got shot; some says he was drownded 'a' las' Tuesday night in the Crazy Woman; some says they's been a fight nobody's heard of yit, 't' all. The only man that knows for sure—if he does know—is the man that brought him into Sleepy Cat 'n' if he knows he won't tell." He held out his big enameled cup. "Kelly, gi' me jus' a squirt o' coffee, will y'?"
Kate, on nettles, waited to hear who had brought Hawk in. Bradley would not volunteer the name. Some deference was due him as the purveyor of the big news, and he meant that anyone curious of detail should do the asking. Kate, realizing this, framed with reluctance the question he was waiting for: "Who brought Abe in?"