“No,” I answered. “I have made no mistake, I understand many things now that were dark to me before; what your daughter feared, and why she kept you apart from me, and—and the enemy’s knowledge of our plans, Mr. Burton.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and made no farther attempt to baffle me or to deny his identity. He sat, a little hunched up on the low bed with his hands in his pockets; and he looked at me, quizzically. Certainly, he was a man of great courage. “Well,” he said, “we’re in trouble, sir. It has come to that. Poor Con always said that it would, and that if I took you in I should pay for it. Good Lord, if she saw us now! But, as it turns out, the shoe is on the other foot, Major. It is you who will have to pay for it. I saved your life, and you cannot give me up. You cannot do it, my friend!”
I confess that his answer and his impudence confounded me and roused in me an anger which I could hardly control. How I execrated alike the ill luck that had brought my rescuers to the Bluff and the impulse that had led them to wait for a last stirrup-cup—and so to find me! How above all I cursed the chance that had put it into the Chief’s head to seek my advice that morning—that morning of all mornings—before the news of my return had gone abroad!
Even for the man before me I was concerned; he had saved my life, he had treated me well, and he had done both in the face of strong temptation to do otherwise. But I was not so much concerned for him as for Constantia. Poor Constantia! The picture that rose before me, of the girl, of her love for her father, of her anxiety, of the Bluff, of all, rent my heart.
“How long have you been doing this?” I asked harshly. My voice sounded in my own ears like another man’s.
He raised his eyebrows. He did not answer. He left the burden on me.
“You won’t say anything?”
“Only that I saved your life, Major,” he replied quaintly. “I’ve done my stint, it is for you to do yours. You can’t give me up.”
He leaned back, his hands clasped about his knees, his eyes smiling. Apparently he experienced no doubt, no anxiety, no alarm; only some faint amusement. But probably behind the mask, which practice had made to sit easily on him, fear was working as in other men; probably he felt the halter not far from his neck. For when I did not answer, “You’ve not brought me here for nothing, I suppose?” he said, speaking in a sharper tone.
I had no difficulty in finding an answer to that. “No,” I said with the bitterness I had so far repressed. “No, if you must know, I have brought you here, to sink myself something lower than you! To pay the bill which I owe for my life with my honor! Oh, its a damned fine pass, sir, you’ve brought me to!” I continued savagely. “To soil hands that I’ve kept clean so far, and dirty a name—”