She went into the house and knocked softly at the girl’s door—after listening a moment and assuring herself that Adams had not wakened. Polly’s room was dark and she was standing, still wrapped in the blanket, by the window in the moonlight.
“Well?” she said, rather curtly.
“Nothing—only——” Mrs. Van’s usually glib tongue faltered. “I was just going to say that you mustn’t take Marc Scott too—too—I mean, you mustn’t be too hard on him.”
“Hard!”
“Yes. It’s just his way; he don’t mean to be ugly. He’s queer, Scotty is, kind of—oh, I don’t know how to put it, but he didn’t mean to be rude to you.”
“He was, though, very rude.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. It sort of shocked him to think you’d do a thing like that and he didn’t stop to think.”
“Maybe he’ll stop to think next time.”
“Maybe, but I don’t reckon so. Folks like that you can’t change much; you have to take ’em or leave ’em as they are. He’s awful square, though. I’d trust him with anything; money, liquor, or women. When you’ve been around as much as I have, you’ll know that means something.”
In the meantime, Scott, Hard, and the train gang, going down to the corral to investigate, found Miller lying as Pachuca had left him, in the middle of the road. He was regaining consciousness as they came along, and did not seem to be badly hurt, the knife having entered the fleshy part of the arm near the shoulder.