“T’ike my advice, and come with us fellows to Texas. Before you’re long there, the Mexikin girls will make you stop moping about Miss Armstrong. After the first fandango you’ve been at, you won’t care a straw for her. Believe me, you’ll soon forget her.”
“Never!” exclaims Darke, in the fervour of his passion—thwarted though it has been—forgetting the danger he is in.
“If that’s your detarmination,” returns Borlasse, “an’ you’ve made up your mind to keep that sweetheart in sight, you won’t be likely to live long. As sure as you’re sittin’ thar, afore breakfast time to-morrow mornin’ the town of Naketosh ’ll be too hot to hold ye.”
Darke starts from his chair, as if it had become too hot.
“Keep cool, Quantrell!” counsels the Texan. “No need for ye to be scared at what I’m sayin’. Thar’s no great danger jest yet. There might be, if you were in that chair, or this room, eight hours later. I won’t be myself, not one. For I may as well tell ye, that Jim Borlasse, same’s yourself, has reasons for shiftin’ quarters from the Choctaw Chief. And so, too, some o’ the fellows we’ve been drinkin’ with. We’ll all be out o’ this a good hour afore sun-up. Take a friend’s advice, and make tracks along wi’ us. Will you?”
Darke still hesitates to give an affirmative answer. His love for Helen Armstrong—wild, wanton passion though it be—is the controlling influence of his life. It has influenced him to follow her thus far, almost as much as the hope of escaping punishment for his crime. And though knowing, that the officers of justice are after him, he clings to the spot where she is staying, with that fascination which keeps the fox by the kennel holding the hounds. The thought of leaving her behind—perhaps never to see her again—is more repugnant than the spectre of a scaffold!
The Texan guesses the reason of his irresolution. More than this, he knows he has the means to put an end to it. A word will be sufficient; or, at most, a single speech. He puts it thus—
“If you’re detarmined to stick by the apron-strings o’ Miss Armstrong, you’ll not do that by staying here in Naketosh. Your best place, to be near her, will be along with me.”
“How so, Mr Borlasse?” questions Darke, his eyes opening to a new light. “Why do you say that?”
“You ought to know, without my tellin’ you—a man of your ’cuteness, Quantrell! You say you can never forget the older of that pair o’ girls. I believe you; and will be candid, too, in sayin’, no more is Jim Borlasse like to forget the younger. I thought nothin’ could ’a fetched that soft feelin’ over me. ’Twant likely, after what I’ve gone through in my time. But she’s done it—them blue eyes of hers; hanged if they hain’t! Then, do you suppose that I’m going to run away from, and lose sight o’ her and them? No; not till I’ve had her within these arms, and tears out o’ them same peepers droppin’ on my cheeks. That is, if she take it in the weepin’ way.”