“I think Mr. Wade will be glad to have you there,” said Christopher, mildly. “He didn’t say anything to the contrary. He expects Mr. Barrett to have some one to keep him company as far as the stage road, though he thought it probably would be a woodsman. But Mr. Wade gave particular instructions about any crowd comin’ along, and he’ll not meet any one if your boss MacLeod is in the party. That’s straight talk. He’s had all the trouble with your boss that he cares for.”
After a withering survey of Straight, which the old guide endured with much composure, Britt beckoned Barrett away with a jerk of his head, and the two strolled behind the horse-hovel.
“There you have it, John,” he snarled, more ireful as a champion than the unhappy principal. “It’s a put-up job. He’s goin’ to plaster the girl onto you. It’s his play. He’s goin’ to use it for all it’s worth.”
“It will be better for me to take her out than to have him chase along after me with the girl and the story—if that’s the way he feels; and it’s plain that he means to make trouble,” said Barrett, moodily. “I can put her away somewhere in a boarding-school, and—”
The Honorable Pulaski broke upon this doleful capitulation with contemptuous brusqueness.
“You talk like a fool, John! Take that girl outside these woods and give her an education? File her teeth so that she can set ’em into your throat? You teach her to read and to write and to know things, and that’s what it will amount to in the end. The girl has got to stay here!” He embraced the big woods in a vigorous gesture. “She belongs here! And the only way to keep her here is to put her in the hands of a man that—”
Colin MacLeod had followed them to their retreat behind the hovel, and was standing at a little distance, looking at them.
“Come here, Colin!” And Britt advanced to meet him and clutched his arm, the arm that Dwight Wade had dislocated in that memorable battle in Castonia. “Boy, if you are a coward, now is your time to own it. Old Straight has come down here to tell us that Wade has that girl in his hands. He knows what she’s worth. He wants to meet Barrett and myself. You can guess why. He proposes to get hold of that money. He knows we control it. We can’t help ourselves if she chooses to stay with him.”
The able old liar of the Umcolcus knew his man as the harper knows his instrument. He felt the muscles ridge under his clutch.