"Remember it, for some day you will have cause to do so, I do not doubt. She is a terror, and she has brains. The worst kind of a criminal. She should have been a man, for she has a man's daring, a man's recklessness, and a man's way of doing things. Black Madge, we call her here."
Nick recalled all that conversation now, plunged into a reverie about it by Handsome's use of the name. All the time he had been in the room with her in that house in the swamp, he had felt that he ought to remember where he had seen those eyes before. Now, he counted the years that had passed since he saw her, and, to his astonishment, they were five.
"She was seventeen then, the chief told me," he thought, "that would make her twenty-two by now."
And then it came back to him how strangely she had looked at him while he was leaving her presence, and he wondered if her recollection for faces was as good or even better than his own.
"But," he argued, "it could not be possible that she would remember me from that one short glance she must have had of me at that time. And, besides, I was not disguised at all, and now I look no more like myself than—well, than she does."
"What the devil are you so silent about?" demanded Handsome. They had reached the fence at the railroad track, and Handsome was leaning against it.
"I was trying to figure out in my mind what sort of a lay we are on to-night," replied Nick. "I'm not used to starting out without knowing where I am going. I feel like a horse—with you for a driver."
"Well"—Handsome laughed—"I won't use the whip unless you get skittish."
"What are we waiting here for?"
"We are waiting for our chauffeur with the automobile," grinned Handsome. "Nice road for an auto, isn't it?—bumping over those ties."