“Fletcher,” I said. “You and your advocate worked up a lying charge against me. Shall I ask your wife before you whether it’s true? Do you know that in half an hour I could bring the police on you?”
“I guess you won’t,” said Tetley, laying his hand significantly on the rifle behind him; while Fletcher answered sullenly, “You needn’t. I know now it isn’t true. But I was mad, and believed it at first, and afterward it was either that or five years. There were other counts against me; and what could a poor man do?”
Minnie looked at him with disgust, and shivered as she snatched one of her hands from his grasp. “It was very good of your sister, Ralph,” she said, “and I knew you would forgive me for borrowing the horse; he is there in the stable, and Tetley will find Tom another. It was an awful journey, even before we reached Fairmead, where I hid him in the bottom of the sleigh; and they brought me in here almost frozen stiff.”
“I thought she was gone, poor thing!” said Mrs. Tetley, who was cooking something on the stove; and her husband broke in: “She looked like it. Cuss them police! But we euchred them. A young trooper rides up to the door and drives me round prospecting with a lantern. Of course, he 314 found nothing, and when he rode off I began to tumble. Found your friends in the log-trail and brought them in, knowing them blame troopers wouldn’t come back again. Sergeant Angus is a smart man, but he doesn’t know everything, and I’ll see Fletcher and his missis safe in the hands of a friend who will slip them over the border.”
“I’m not going,” said Minnie. “Ralph—and you all can listen—my husband came to me desperate and hopeless in fear of the law. Oh, it’s no secret, all the prairie knows that he used me scandalously—but he was my husband—and I could not give him up. So I took the few dollars I had and hired the sleigh, and when the horse fell dead lame we came to Fairmead. I knew, though we had wronged you, I could trust you. Now he’s in safe hands; I’m going no further with him. There are some things one cannot forget. I shall tell the story to the people who employed me; they are kind-hearted folk, but it doesn’t matter if they give me up. I’m sick of this life, and nothing matters now.”
She broke out half-sobbing, half-laughing wildly, and though Fletcher growled something sullenly, hanging his head with the air of a whipped hound, I fancied that he seemed relieved at this decision, and was slightly surprised to see he had even the decency to appear ashamed of himself. Then, knowing that the people she worked for would do their best for Minnie, I determined to write to them, and I asked Tetley to bring out the horse.
“Can’t I give you a shakedown in the stable until morning?” he said. “The missis will look after Mrs. Fletcher, and see she gets back safe,” and he added so that the others could not hear him, “Fletcher’s meaner than poison, and I’d let the troopers have him and welcome, only for the sake of the woman, and because he knows enough about some friends of mine to make things lively if he talked.”
Tetley was of course a rascal, but there was a certain 315 warped honesty in his dealings with brother rogues—at least so rumor said—and I knew if he had given his promise he could be trusted, while a few of his perfectly honest neighbors were sorry when not long afterward Sergeant Angus proved too sharp for him.
“No, thanks,” I answered. “My horse would be worth a great deal in Dakota, and I’ll clear out while I’m sure of him.”
“Good-bye, Ralph,” said Minnie, when I donned the fur cap and mittens. “I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again—no, of course you won’t be sorry; but you and Jasper were the only two who ever showed me kindness in this hard, hard country. I wish, oh, how I wish I had never seen it! Tell my father to forget me, the sooner the better. I have chosen my own way, and must follow it. It’s leading me to prison now.”