“You an’ me’s been partners for a right long spell, Bud Grant, ain’t we?”
Colby started. The use of that discarded name brought back the past with its ghosts of fear. He had almost forgotten that once he had been Bud Grant, and a deserter from the army. It was all part of a bygone and walled-in long ago. Though they were 275 quite alone he looked furtively about him and spoke in a lowered voice:
“Don’t call me by thet name. Thar ain’t no man but you knows erbout—what I used to be.”
“Thet’s what I’ve been studyin’ erbout. Nobody else but me.”
Severance sat silent for a while after that announcement, but there was a meaning smile on his lips, and Colby paled a shade whiter.
“I reckon I kin trust ye; I always hev,” he declared with a specious confidence.
Severance nodded. “I was on guard duty an’ I suffered ye ter escape,” he went reminiscently on. “I knows thet ye kilt Captain Comyn, an’ I’ve done kept a close mouth all these years. Now ye’re a rich man an’ I’m a pore one. Hit looks like ter me ye owes me a debt an’ ye’d ought ter do a leetle something for me.”
So that was it! Colby knew that if he yielded at all, this man’s avarice and his importunities would feed on themselves increasingly and endlessly. Yet he dared not refuse, so he sought to temporize.
“I reckon thar’s right smart jestice in what ye says,” he conceded, “but I don’t know jest yit how I stands or how much money I’m wuth. Ye’ll have ter give me a leetle time ter find out.”
But when Severance mounted his mule and rode away, Sim Colby gave him only a short start and then hurried on foot through the hill tangles by a short cut that would intercept his visitor’s course.