“I couldn’t very well ask anybody else to go after her,” he admitted, with a modest reticence that amounted almost to being ashamed. “After I made sure that we had Chadron’s raiders cooped up where they couldn’t get out, I went up and got her. Thorn wasn’t there, nobody but the Indian woman, the ’breed’s wife. She was the jailer—a regular wildcat of a woman.”
That was all there was to be told, it seemed, as far as Macdonald was concerned. He had the hole in the wall—at which he had worked as he talked—to his liking now, and was squinting through it like a telescope.
“Nola wasn’t afraid to come with you,” she said, positively.
“She didn’t appear to be, Frances.”
“No; she knew she was safe, no matter how little she deserved any kindness at your hands. I know what she did—I know how she—how she—struck you in the face that time!”
“Oh,” said he, as if reminded of a trifle that he had forgotten.
“Did she—put her arms around your neck that way many times while you were carrying her home?”
“She did not! Many times! why, she didn’t do it even once.”
“Oh, at the gate—I saw her!”