She sat back and regarded him with something of a frown and with folded arms.
He said with a sudden earnestness: "You seem to take it for granted that
I'm due for a lot of trouble."
But she shook her head gloomily.
"I know what you're due for; I can see it in your eyes; I can hear it in your way of talkin'. If you was to ride the range with a sheriff on one side of you and a marshal on the other you couldn't help fallin' into trouble."
"As a fortune-teller," remarked Nash, "you'd make a good undertaker,
Sally."
"Shut up, Steve. I've seen this bird in action and I know what I'm talking about. When you coming back this way, Bard?"
He said thoughtfully: "Perhaps to-morrow night—perhaps—"
"It ought to be to-morrow night," she said pointedly, her eyes on Nash.
The latter had pushed his chair back a trifle and sat now with downward head and his right hand resting lightly on his thigh. Only the place in which they sat was illumined by the two lamps, and the forward part of the room, nearer the street, was a sea of shadows, wavering when the wind stirred the flame in one of the lamps or sent it smoking up the chimney. Sally and Bard sat with their backs to the door, and Nash half facing it.
"Steve," she said, with a sudden low tenseness of voice that sent a chill up Bard's spinal cord, "Steve, what's wrong?"