“There is a back way into the house. Hadn’t you better just step in that way, and have him fix you up? He’s in the back room, alone, smoking.”
Overton turned with an impatient exclamation, and a sharp, questioning look. It was the half-paralyzed stranger—Harris.
“Oh, I ain’t interfering!” he said, amiably. “But as I slipped out through the back door before your visitors left, I dropped to the fact that you had some damage done to that left arm. Yes, I’ll carry any message you like to your doctor, for I like your nerve. But I must say it’s thankless work to stand up as a silent target for cold lead, just so some one else may dance undisturbed. Take an old man’s advice, sonny, do some of the dancing yourself.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE STRANGER’S WARNING.
That one festive night decided the immediate future of ’Tana. All her joy in it did not prevent a decision that it should be the last in her experience, for a year to come, at least.
It was Lyster who broached the subject, and Overton looked at him closely while he talked.
“You are right,” he decided, at last; “a school is the easiest path out of this jungle, I reckon. I thought of a school, but didn’t know where—I’m not posted on such things. But if you know the trail to a good one, we’ll fix it. She has no family folks at all, so—”