She grew very solemn, with a trace of sadness in her voice.
"I'll tell you why, Terry. Because if you stay around here too long, they'll make you what you don't want to be—another Black Jack. Don't you see that that's why they like you? Because you're his son, and because they want you to be another like him. Not that I have anything against him. I guess he was a fine fellow in his way." She paused and stared directly at him in a way he found hard to bear. "He must of been! But that isn't the sort of a man you want to make out of yourself. I know. You're trying to go straight. Well, Terry, nobody that ever stepped could stay straight long when they had around 'em Denver Pete and—my father." She said the last with a sob of grief. He tried to protest, but she waved him away.
"I know. And it's true. He'd do anything for me, except change himself. Believe me, Terry, you got to get out of here—pronto. Is they anything to hold you here?"
"A great deal. Three hundred dollars I owe your father."
She considered him again with that mute shake of the head. Then: "Do you mean it? I see you do. I don't suppose it does any good for me to tell you that he cheated you out of that money?"
"If I was fool enough to lose it that way, I won't take it back."
"I knew that, too—I guessed it. Oh, Terry, I know a pile more about the inside of your head than you'd ever guess! Well, I knew that—and I come with the money so's you can pay back Dad in the morning. Here it is—and they's just a mite more to help you on your way."
She laid the little handful of gold on the table beside the bed and rose.
"Don't go," said Terry, when he could speak. "Don't go, Kate! I'm not that low. I can't take your money!"
She stood by the bed and stamped lightly. "Are you going to be a fool about this, too?"