“Now what’s all this about? How come I find you here like this with my sister?” demanded Jackson, trying to be aggressive.
“Say, Jackson, do you want your sister to marry Hanna?” Lockwood asked.
“Nuther him nor you! What’s that got to do with it? I heard of the dirty trick you tried to work on him down in Mobile.”
“And you believed it?”
“’Course we did. Why not? Tom’d shoot you on sight if he saw you. Good thing it was me come down here ’stead of him.”
“Well, it was all a d—d lie,” said Lockwood. He looked the boy over with a smile. He felt too exultant, too excited in that moment to have the slightest resentment. In spite of his bravado Jackson looked like a defiant and frightened schoolboy, and Lockwood half smiled at him with sympathy and liking.
“Sit down on that log,” he said. “I want to talk to you. You young devil, what sort of scrape have you been getting into now? Of course, I knew you on the road last night. What did you try to hold us up for? You didn’t need the money.”
The boy sat down heavily on the log and took his hands out of his pockets. His aggressiveness evaporated suddenly.
“I reckon you’ve got the whip hand of me,” he said sullenly. “’Course I knowed you knew me when you turned me loose. Well, how much do you want? Seems like I’ve got to buy off the hull earth.”
“You haven’t got to buy me, anyway. Who have you got to buy off? I don’t want anything. I’m in this as your friend, and I believe you need one mighty bad. See here! I’m going to tell you something. For over three years I’ve been looking for Hanna to kill him.”