“And Withee turned you over to him, knowin’ he’d do it!” stormed the baron. “His men blabbed it that Lane had taken you. Withee, Wade—we’ll clean out the whole coop of ’em!”
But John Barrett did not seem to warm up to this plan of vengeance. He still kept his eyes on the fire. His shoulders were hunched forward with something of abjectness in their droop.
“You haven’t got some whiskey handy, have you, Pulaski?” he asked, plaintively. “I don’t feel well. I’ve had an awful night and day.”
Britt brought the liquor from a cupboard, cursing soulfully and urging vengeance. But after Barrett drank from the pannikin he leaned his face to the blaze again and broke upon the Honorable Pulaski’s vicious monologue.
“I’ve told the wrong end first—but there are some things easier to say than others. It was Linus Lane who tied me to that tree and left me to die there, but”—Barrett rolled his head sideways and gave Britt a queer glance from his eye-corners—“did you ever see my daughter Elva, Pulaski?”
Britt blinked as though trying to understand this sudden shifting of topic, and wagged slow nod of assent.
“Have you ever seen that girl of the Skeet settlement—the one that doesn’t belong to them?” Barrett half choked over the question.
“Have I seen her?” roared the Honorable Pulaski, no longer paying attention to incongruity of questions. “Why, that’s the draggle-tailed lightnin’-bug that set this fire that we’ve been fightin’ for forty-eight hours, and that only this rain stopped from bein’ a fifty-thousand-acre crown-fire! Have I seen her! I was there when she set it, and only the grace o’ God and that Wade’s fist saved her from bein’ shot, and shot by me! I would have killed her like I’d kill a quill-pig!”
Barrett did not look up from the fire.
“Then you’ve seen both those girls, you say? I haven’t seen this one in the woods here. But this Wade told me to-day that they very much resemble each other. He has heard some gossip and is making threats. He seems to think I ought to take the girl and care for her.”