Let our next chapter reveal it.
Story 1--Chapter XII.
A Traitor’s Epistle.
As already chronicled, Dick Tarleton has started along the forest path, leaving Jerry Rook under the cottonwood tree.
For some time he remains there, motionless as the trunk beside him.
The exclamation of chagrin that escaped him, as the other passed beyond earshot, is followed by words of a more definite shape and meaning. It was Dick Tarleton who drew from him the former. It is to him the latter are addressed, though without the intention of their being heard.
“Ye durned fool! ye’d speil my plan, wud ye? An’ I ’spose all the same if I war to tell ye o’t? But I ain’t gwine to do that, nor to hev it speiled neyther by sich a obs’nate eedyut as you. Six hundred dollars pre annul air too much o’ a good pull to be let go agin slack as that. An’ doggoned if I do let it go, cost what it may to keep holt o’t. Yes, cost what it may!”
The phrase repeated with increased emphasis, along with a sudden change in the attitude of the speaker, shows some sinister determination.