“I did not know, Grassette,” the Governor went on “I did not know it was you.”
“Why did you come, m’sieu’?”
“Call him ‘your Honour,”’ said the Sheriff sharply. Grassette’s face hardened, and his look turned upon the Sheriff was savage and forbidding. “I will speak as it please me. Who are you? What do I care? To hang me—that is your business; but, for the rest, you spik to me differen’. Who are you? Your father kep’ a tavern for thieves, vous savez bien!” It was true that the Sheriff’s father had had no savoury reputation in the West.
The Governor turned his head away in pain and trouble, for the man’s rage was not a thing to see—and they both came from the little parish of St. Francis, and had passed many an hour together.
“Never mind, Grassette,” he said gently. “Call me what you will. You’ve got no feeling against me; and I can say with truth that I don’t want your life for the life you took.”
Grassette’s breast heaved. “He put me out of my work, the man I kill. He pass the word against me, he hunt me out of the mountains, he call—tete de diable! he call me a name so bad. Everything swim in my head, and I kill him.”
The Governor made a protesting gesture. “I understand. I am glad his mother was dead. But do you not think how sudden it was? Now here, in the thick of life, then, out there, beyond this world in the darkin purgatory.”
The brave old man had accomplished what everyone else, priest, lawyer, Sheriff and watcher, had failed to do: he had shaken Grassette out of his blank isolation and obdurate unrepentance, had touched some chord of recognisable humanity.
“It is done—well, I pay for it,” responded Grassette, setting his jaw. “It is two deaths for me. Waiting and remembering, and then with the Sheriff there the other—so quick, and all.”
The Governor looked at him for some moments without speaking. The Sheriff intervened again officiously.