“No.”
“Yes,” cried the old man.
“Listen, Henry,” pleaded Nan, seeking shelter from the furious blast within his arm, “just for a moment, listen!”
“Not now, I tell you!” cried de Spain.
“He was coming, Henry, all the way––and he is sick––just to say it to you. Let him say it here, now.”
“Go on!” cried de Spain roughly. “Say it.”
“I’m not afraid of you, de Spain!” shouted the old man, his neck bared to the flying ice. “Don’t think it! You’re a better man than I am, better than I ever was––don’t think I don’t know that. But I’m not afraid of e’er a man I faced, de Spain; they’ll tell you that when I’m dead. All the trouble that ever come ’tween you and me come by an accident––come before you was born, and come through Dave Sassoon, and he’s held it over me ever since you come up into this country. I was a young fellow. Sassoon worked for my father. The cattle and sheep war was on, north of Medicine Bend. The Peace River sheepmen raided our place––your father was with them. He never did us no harm, but my brother, Bay Morgan, was shot in that raid by a man name of Jennings. My brother was fifteen years old, de Spain. I started out to get the man that shot him. Sassoon trailed him to the Bar M, the old de Spain ranch, working for your father.”
The words fell fast and in a fury. They came as if they had been choked back till they strangled. “Sassoon took me over there. Toward night we got in sight of the ranch-house. We saw a man down at the corral. ‘That’s Jennings,’ Sassoon says. I never laid eyes on him before––I never laid eyes on your father before. Both of us fired. Next day we heard your father was killed, and Jennings had left the country. Sassoon or I, one of us, killed your father, de Spain. If it was I, I did it never knowing who he was, never meaning to touch him. I was after the man that killed my brother. Sassoon didn’t care a damn which it was, never did, then nor never. But he held it over me to make trouble sometime ’twixt you and me. I was a young fellow. I thought I was revenging my brother. And if your father was killed by a patched bullet, his blood is not on me, de Spain, and never was. Sassoon always shot a patched bullet. I never shot one in my life. And I’d never told you this of my own self. Nan said it was the whole truth from me to you, or her life. She’s as much mine as she is yours. I nursed her. I took care of her when there weren’t no other living soul to do it. She got me and herself out into this, this morning. I’d never been caught like this if I’d had my way. I told her ’fore we’d been out an hour we’d never see the end of 411 it. She said she’d rather die in it than you’d think she quit you. I told her I’d go on with her and do as she said––that’s why we’re here, and that’s the whole truth, so help me God!