“By jing! Just as I got the words out o’ my 309 mouth who comes a-stalking in but Gale Morgan. The minute he seen me, he lit on me to beat the band––called me everything he could lay his tongue to. I let on I was drunk, but that didn’t help. He ordered me off the premises. ’N’ the worst of it was, Nan chimed right in and began to scold Bunny for lettin’ me in––and leaves the room, quick-like. Bunny put it on Pardaloe, and she and Gale had it, and b’jing, Gale put me out––said he’d pepper me. But wait till I tell y’ how she fooled him. It was rainin’ like hell, ’n’ it looked as if I was booked for a ride through it and hadn’t half drunk my second cup of coffee at that. I starts for the barn, when some one in the dark on the porch grabs my arm, spins me around like a top, throws a flasher up into my face, and there was Nan. ‘Bull,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to see you ride out in this with nothing to eat; come this way quick.’
“She took me down cellar from the outside, under the kitchen. When Gale goes out again she flings up the trap-door, speaks to Mex, pulls all the kitchen shades down, locks the doors, and I sets down on the trap-door steps ’n’ eats a pipin’ hot supper; say! Well, I reckon I drank a couple o’ quarts of coffee. ‘Bull,’ she says, ‘I never done you no harm, did I?’ ‘Never,’ says I, ‘and I never done you none, neither, did I? And 310 what’s more, I never will do you none.’ Then I up and told her. ‘Tell him,’ says she, ‘I can’t get hold of a horse, nor a pen, nor a piece of paper––I can’t leave the house but what I am watched every minute. They keep track of me day and night. Tell him,’ she says, ‘I can protect myself; they think they’ll break me––make me do what they want me to––marry––but they can’t break me, and I’ll never do it––tell him that.’
“‘But,’ says I, ‘that ain’t the whole case, Miss Nan. What he’ll ask me, when he’s borin’ through me with his eyes like the way you’re borin’ me through with yours, is: When will you see him––when will he see you?’
“She looked worrit for a minit. Then she looks around, grabs up the cover of an empty ’bacco box and a fork and begins a-writing inside.” Bull, with as much of a smile as he could call into life from his broken nerves, opened up his blanket, drew carefully from an inside coat pocket an oilskin package, unwrapped from it the flat, square top of a tin tobacco box on which Nan had scratched a message, and handed it triumphantly to de Spain.
He read her words eagerly:
“Wait; don’t have trouble. I can stand anything better than bloodshed, Henry. Be patient.”
While de Spain, standing close to the lantern, 311 deciphered the brief note, Bull, wrapping his blanket about him with the air of one whose responsibility is well ended, held out his hands toward the blazing stove. De Spain went over the words one by one, and the letters again and again. It was, after all their months of ardent meetings, the first written message he had ever had from Nan. He flamed angrily at the news that she was prisoner in her own home. But there was much to weigh in her etched words, much to think about concerning her feelings––not alone concerning his own.
He dropped into his chair and, oblivious for a moment of his companion’s presence, stared into the fire. When he started from his revery Bull was asleep. De Spain picked him up, carried him in his blanket over to a cot, cut the wet rags off him, and, rolling him in a second blanket, walked out into the barn and ordered up a team and light wagon for Sleepy Cat. The rain fell all night.