“Here, shut up yer yawp!” Snaky Pete shouted to her. “You’re a nuisance; do ye know it?”
“A nuisance is a good sight more of a credit to ther community than a murderous wretch like you!” she retorted. “Shut up yer own yawp! The Lord gimme my tongue, and I’ve a right to use it, and I’m goin’ to.”
She turned again to Pool Clayton.
“I’m ashamed of ye!” she said. “Why did you write me sich a pack o’ lies?”
“Just to make you think I—I was killed, or would be,” he admitted.
“You didn’t want me to know that you had turned road agent. You didn’t want me to know that you’d j’ined forces with that measly runt there that I heard one of these men call Snaky Pete. Well, he is snaky, and he’s worse’n snaky.”
Then her voice and manner changed.
“Pool,” she said, with something of motherly tenderness in her voice, “it hurt me to believe that you’d gone wrong; and to find you here hurts me more than that did. Git out of it, son; leave this crowd of villains, and try to be an honest man. I’m a pore old woman, but I’ll work my finger nails off to git ye a start in some honest way, if you’ll jes’ make a try to be honest.”
“Take her away,” commanded Snaky Pete, irritated and wrathful.
She suffered herself to be led away, broken in spirit now, and sobbing. For the moment, at least, she was no longer Pizen Jane, but a heartbroken old woman.