He was silent. An unlucky word had betrayed him. He could have bitten his tongue. Still, he reflected sullenly, it was bound to come. You can't make black white, however tenderly you describe it.
Colina sprang to her feet.
"Unfair!" she cried. "That is to say a cheat! You can say it while he is lying up-stairs desperately wounded!"
"Colina, be reasonable," he implored. "The fact that he is suffering can't make a wrong right."
"There is no wrong!" she cried. "What do you know about conditions here?"
"They come to my camp," he said simply, "one after another to beg me to help them."
"And you were not above it," she flashed back, "murderers and others!"
An honest anger fired Ambrose's eyes. "You're talking wildly," he said sternly. "I'm trying to help you."
Colina laughed.
With a great effort he commanded his temper, "What do you see yourself in your rides about the settlement?" he asked. "Poverty and wretchedness! How do you explain it when times are good—when this is known as the richest post in the north?"