All the time we were handling her and getting across the bar I was thinking hard enough to split my head open. Outside I came to a conclusion.
“Buck,” I said, “you’re free of her now.”
“Who?” says he.
“Your wife,” says I.
Then I told him all I’d done. I thought he’d have knifed me. He was for putting back right away till I played my last card. I was only working on suspicion but I was right.
“Put your hand in your pocket,” I said, “and pull out that bundle of notes your wife gave you. If the tally is right, I’ll go straight back with you and apologise to her.”
He pulls out the parcel and opens it. It was full of bits of newspaper and old washing bills. Then I pulls out the other parcel I’d nicked and there were his notes.
Brent relit his pipe.
“He never saw her again,” said Brent. “When we put back to ’Frisco, the laundry was shut and she gone. He didn’t want to see her either. The old Greyhound was enough for him after his experience of women—and now she’s going too.”
We sat for a while in silence and tobacco smoke, then Brent looked up. The coughing and churning of a tug came through the open skylight and the hot hazy atmosphere of the cabin.