Sinnet ran a long finger slowly across his lips, and seemed meditating what he should say to the mountaineer. At length he spoke, looking into Buckmaster’s face. “What was the story Ricketts told you? What did your boy tell Ricketts? I’ve heard, too, about it, and that’s why I asked you if you had proofs that Greevy killed Clint. Of course, Clint should know, and if he told Ricketts, that’s pretty straight; but I’d like to know if what I heard tallies with what Ricketts heard from Clint. P’r’aps it’d ease your mind a bit to tell it. I’ll watch the Bend—don’t you trouble about that. You can’t do these two things at one time. I’ll watch for Greevy; you give me Clint’s story to Ricketts. I guess you know I’m feelin’ for you, an’ if I was in your place I’d shoot the man that killed Clint, if it took ten years. I’d have his heart’s blood—all of it. Whether Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I’d have him—plumb.”
Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation and made a gesture of cruelty. “Clint right or wrong? There ain’t no question of that. My boy wasn’t the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever do but what was right? If Clint was in the wrong I’d kill Greevy jest the same, for Greevy robbed him of all the years that was before him—only a sapling he was, an’ all his growin’ to do, all his branches to widen an’ his roots to spread. But that don’t enter in it, his bein’ in the wrong. It was a quarrel, and Clint never did Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over cards, an’ Greevy was drunk, an’ followed Clint out into the prairie in the night and shot him like a coyote. Clint hadn’t no chance, an’ he jest lay there on the ground till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey found him. An’ Clint told Ricketts who it was.”
“Why didn’t Ricketts tell it right out at once?” asked Sinnet.
“Greevy was his own cousin—it was in the family, an’ he kept thinkin’ of Greevy’s gal, Em’ly. Her—what’ll it matter to her! She’ll get married, an she’ll forgit. I know her, a gal that’s got no deep feelin’ like Clint had for me. But because of her Ricketts didn’t speak for a year. Then he couldn’t stand it any longer, an’ he told me—seein’ how I suffered, an’ everybody hidin’ their suspicions from me, an’ me up here out o’ the way, an’ no account. That was the feelin’ among ‘em—what was the good of making things worse! They wasn’t thinkin’ of the boy or of Jim Buckmaster, his father. They was thinkin’ of Greevy’s gal—to save her trouble.”
Sinnet’s face was turned towards Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed, as it were, on a still more distant object—a dark, brooding, inscrutable look.
“Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?” The voice was very quiet, but it had a suggestive note.
“That’s all Clint told Bill before he died. That was enough.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then, puffing out long clouds of smoke, and in a tone of curious detachment, as though he were telling of something that he saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a battle from a far vantage-point might report to a blind man standing near, Sinnet said:
“P’r’aps Ricketts didn’t know the whole story; p’r’aps Clint didn’t know it all to tell him; p’r’aps Clint didn’t remember it all. P’r’aps he didn’t remember anything except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He’d only be thinking of the thing that mattered most to him—that his life was over, an’ that a man had put a bullet in him, an’—”
Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and continued: “As I say, maybe he didn’t remember everything; he had been drinkin’ a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn’t used to liquor, and couldn’t stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He always gets drunk when he first comes South to spend the winter with his girl Em’ly.” He paused a moment, then went on a little more quickly. “Greevy was proud of her—couldn’t even bear her being crossed in any way; and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody Greevy quarrelled too.”