“Yore dad’s too sespicious. He’ll start huntin’ me up; you see if he don’t.” He broke off, resuming: “I—I won’t ever ferget what you’ve done for me, Miss Huntington. An’ you wouldn’t give me away, would you? An’ you’re desp’rate for money. I ain’t ever had anybody give me such a square deal—chuck over a fortune to help——” His voice trailed off into silence.
“You poor, wounded wild animal!” said Dot gently. “Even a coyote is better off than you. Can’t you understand? Don’t you know any different? Is it so much easier to be bad, so much more pleasing to have a pack of legalized killers always on your heels? Or don’t you care?” She paused and added: “Do you really want to repay me for everything I’ve done for you?”
Through a square hole under the eaves, the first white beams of the moon were just struggling in. She could see the man’s face indistinctly; the white bandage around his head.
“I do. Say it! Anythin’ you want done, Miss Huntington,” he nodded.
“Then, quit this miserable life. Be a man. Go far away, where no one will ever recognize you, and start fresh. Be honorable—somehow. You can do it, if you want to. But will you? To pay me back?” There was a strange, dramatic note in her voice.
He caught her hand suddenly, fervently. “I’ll do it, Miss Huntington. Listen! You turned down ten thousand dollars; you stuck by me. I’m goin’ to show you what I kin do for you. Some of these days you’re goin’ to hear from me.”
“I’m so glad,” she breathed. “I’d be so proud to know that I helped remake the wild animal, Billy Gee, into a God-fearing human being.”
A short, heavy silence fell. From somewhere in the ground floor of the barn, a board expanding with the cool night air snapped sharply.
“I come up here to take a coupla these old blankets, sence I can’t lug my saddle; it’s too heavy,” he announced, after a little while. “Would you mind fixin’ ’em for me?”
She found them half folded, made a neat roll of them, and looped them for slinging over the shoulders with strips she tore from her calico apron. As she prepared to leave him, he spoke again.