"Don't give it to me yet," she said. "Go on."
"Well," Dickie turned the shriveled and stained paper lightly in restless fingers. "That morning in New York I got up close to the car and had my notebook out. Hilliard was waiting for the ambulance. His ribs were smashed and his arm broken. He was conscious. He was laughing and talking and smoking cigarettes. I asked him some questions and he took a notion to question me. 'You're from the West,' he said; and when I told him 'Millings,' he kind of gasped and sat up. That turned him faint. But when they were carrying him off, he got a-holt of my hand and whispered, 'Come see me at the hospital.' I was willing enough—I went. And they took me to him—private room. And a nice-looking nurse. And flowers. He has lots of friends in New York—Hilliard, you bet you—" It was irony again and Sheila stirred nervously. That changed his tone. He moved abruptly and came and sat down near her, locking his hands and bending his head to study them in the old way. "He found out who I was and he told me about you, Sheila, and, because he was too much hurt to travel or even to write, he asked me to go out and carry a message for him. Nothing would have kept me from going, anyway," Dickie added quaintly. "When I learned what had been happening and how you were left and no letters coming from Rusty to answer his—well, sir, I could hardly sit still to hear about all that, Sheila. But, anyway—" Dickie moved his hands. They sought the arms of his chair and the fingers tightened. He looked past Sheila. "He told me then how it was with you and him. That you were planning to be married. And I promised to find you and tell you what he said."
"What did he say?"
Dickie spoke carefully, using his strange gift. With every word his face grew a trifle whiter, but that had no effect upon his eloquence. He painted a vivid and touching picture of the shattered and wistful youth. He repeated the shaken words of remorse and love. "I want her to come East and marry me. I love her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I can give her everything she wants in all the world. Tell her to come—" And far more skillfully than ever Hilliard himself could have done, Dickie pleaded the intoxication of that sudden shower of gold, the bewildering change in the young waif's life, the necessity he was under to go and see and touch the miracle. There was a long silence after Dickie had delivered himself of the burden of his promise. The fire leapt and crackled on Hilliard's forsaken hearth. It threw shadows and gleams across Dickie's thin, exhausted face and Sheila's inscrutably thoughtful one.
She held out her hand.
"Give me the letters now, Dickie."
He handed her the bundle that had accumulated in Rusty and the little withered one taken from the body of the trapper. Sheila took them and held them on her knee. She pressed both her hands against her eyes; then, leaning toward the fire, she read the letters, beginning with that one that had spent so many months under the dumb snow.
Berg, who had investigated Dickie, leaned against her knee while she read, his eyes fixed upon her. She read and laid the pile by on the table behind her. She sat for a long while, elbows on the arms of her chair, fingers laced beneath her chin. She seemed to be looking at the fire, but she was watching Dickie through her eyelashes. There was no ease in his attitude. He had his arms folded, his hands gripped the damp sleeves of his coat. When she spoke, he jumped as though she had fired a gun.
"It is not true, Dickie, that things were—were that way between Cosme and me … We had not settled to be married …" She paused and saw that he forced himself to sit quiet. "Do you really think," she said, "that the man that wrote those letters, loves me?" Dickie was silent. He would not meet her look. "So you promised Hilliard that you would take me back to marry him?" There was an edge to her voice.
Dickie's face burned cruelly. "No," he said with shortness. "I was going to take you to the train and then come back here. I am going to take up this claim of Hilliard's—he's through with it. He likes the East. You see, Sheila, he's got the whole world to play with. It's quite true." He said this gravely, insistently. "He can give you everything—"