'You'll have a drink?' said the Factor, blankly. 'It's fine whisky; I'm not fooling.'
'I don't want it,' she said, with a passionate movement.
This rendered McAuliffe speechless. The person who refused a drink of good whisky was, in his estimation, something worse than a criminal.
'If you want to do something for me,' continued Marie, 'you can take her out of the house. She has no business here.'
'Reckon none of us have,' the Factor managed to exclaim. Then he comforted himself secretly by means of the rejected bottle.
Here Sinclair buttoned up his coat and announced his intention of going down to the river. Menotah had sufficiently recovered to walk, so Dave, with a stubborn determination not to have her captured, proposed they should return to the hotel and learn final results the next day.
The others agreed. 'How about you, though?' asked Sinclair.
Marie saw she had been addressed. 'I shall stay here,' she said fiercely. 'I want to learn whether the soldiers have caught that traitor. To-morrow I can go home.'
'She's provided for,' muttered the Factor. 'Come on, Captain. Dave's got his gal.'
They went down the slippery wooden steps, while silence fell again over the frame house where human passion had raged so fiercely that night.