“They wouldn’t bother with him,” Jones assured her; “he is too feeble; in fact, he shouldn’t be in that crowd at all. It is the strong men they looking for to-night. They will try to hold people like me an’ Mackenzie.”
Mackenzie’s name slipped out almost without Jones knowing that he had pronounced it. It showed that Mackenzie occupied a large portion of his thoughts in these days. The mention of the name also led to a question which seemed strangely out of place at a time when Colon appeared to be threatened with wholesale destruction.
“You an’ you’ husband ever talk about me?” he asked Susan.
She was surprised at this question, so out of keeping it was with her thoughts just then. Still staring towards the fire, she said, “Why you ask that now?”
“Because I would like to know what you say about me, an’ this is the only time I can ask you. I suppose Mackenzie laugh at me an’ think I am a fool to let him take you away from me so easy?”
“Why you always like to talk disagreeable things, Sam?” she answered, unconsciously dropping back into her old familiar way of addressing him. There was no pretence now; there was a touch of regret in her voice as she went on:
“Mackenzie is quite up at Culebra, an’ you is down here. I going back to-morrow. What’s de good of talkin’ about him?”
“But can you tell me now that you don’t sorry you leave me, Sue; that you are as happy as you used to be? I don’t make any pretence like you. I miss you, an’ I tell you so plain.”
“It was your fault, Sam. Before I went away I ask you if you was going to keep you’ promise to marry me, an’ you say I was talking foolishness. I knew Mackenzie was going to act differently, and, after all, him do for me what you would never do.”
“That is the way you put it. But you didn’t tell me Mackenzie offered to marry you. You stole away from me like a thief in the night. If you had told me you were going, and why you were going, I wouldn’t have made you go, an’ we would have been married to-day. But you didn’t give me a chance to know. Why? I could have done you nothing if you had told me.”