“Tell me anything? Not they. She was such a good girl, Dick. There never was a better. She never complained. She never got her screens, poor girl. I wish she could have had her screens before they murdered her. Where did you lay her, Dick?”
“Mr. Williston,” said Dick, taking firm hold of the man’s burning hands and speaking with soothing calmness, “forgive me for not telling you at once. I thought you knew. I never dreamed that you might have been thinking all the while that Mary was dead. She is alive and well and with friends. She only fainted that night. Come, brace up! Why, man alive, aren’t you glad? Well, then, don’t go to pieces like a child. Come, brace up, I tell you!”
“You—you—wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Dick?”
“As God is my witness, Mary is alive and in Kemah this minute—unless an earthquake has swallowed the hotel during my absence. I saw her less than two hours ago.”
“Give me a minute, my dear fellow, will you? I—I—”
He walked blindly away a few steps and sat down once more on the ruins of his homestead. Gordon waited. The man sat still—his head buried in his hands. Gordon approached, leading his mare, and sat down beside him.
“Now tell me,” he said, with simple directness.
An hour later, the two men separated at the door of the Whites’ claim shanty.
“Lie low here until I send for you,” was Gordon’s parting word.