I told myself that I did not care what she thought. I resolved to forget the whole affair and to focus my attention upon cleaning the gun. But I could not forget. I waded that brook a dozen times as I sat there. I remembered every detail; how still she lay in my arms; how white her face looked as the distant lightning flashes revealed it to me; how her hair brushed my cheek as I bent over her. I was using a wad of cotton waste to polish the gun barrel, and I threw it into a corner, having the insane notion that, in some way, the association of ideas came from that bunch of waste. It—the waste—was grimy and anything but fragrant, as different from the dark lock which the wind had blown against my face as anything well could be, but the hurry with which I discarded it proves my imbecility at that time. Confound the girl! she was a nuisance. I wanted to forget her and her family, and the sulphurous personage to whose care I had once consigned the head of the family apparently took a characteristic delight in arranging matters so that I could not.
The shot gun was, at last, so spotless that even a pretense of further cleaning was ridiculous. I held it level with my eye and squinted through the barrels.
“Don't shoot,” said a voice from the doorway; “I'll come down.”
I lowered the gun, turned and looked. “Big Jim” Colton was standing there, cigar in mouth, cap on the back of his head and both hands in his pockets, exactly as he had appeared in that same doorway when he and I first met. The expected had happened, part of it at least. He had come to see me; the disagreeable interview I had foreseen was at hand.
He nodded and entered without waiting for an invitation.
“Morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” said I, guardedly. I wondered how he would begin the conversation. Our previous meeting had ended almost in a fight. We had been fighting by proxy ever since. I was prepared for more trouble, for haughty condescension, for perfunctory apology, for almost anything except what happened. His next remark might have been addressed to an acquaintance upon whom he had casually dropped in for a friendly call.
“That's a good looking gun you've got there,” he observed. “Let's see it.”
I was too astonished to answer. “Let's look at it,” he repeated, holding out his hand.
Mechanically I passed him the gun. He examined it as if he was used to such things, broke it, snapped it shut, tried the locks with his thumb and handed it back to me.