He shook his head in a slow, puzzled fashion.
"You look just like a white girl—I mean—I don't know what I mean." This time he roused himself fully, the effort being more like a shudder.
"So I have always thought," she said, and her eyes filled again.
"Your skin is like milk beneath your tan, and—I don't mean any disrespect, but—Well, I'm just so damned surprised! Come over here and sit down while I mix you something to put the heart back into you."
He shoved forward a big chair with a wolf-skin flung over it, into which she sank dejectedly, while he stepped to the shelves beside the Yukon stove and took down a bottle and some glasses. She glanced about with faint curiosity, but the interior of the cabin showed nothing out of the ordinary, consisting as it did of one room with a cot in the corner, upon which were tumbled blankets, and above which was a row of pegs. Opposite was a sheet-iron box-stove supported knee-high on a tin-capped framework of wood, and in the centre a table with oil-cloth cover. Around the walls were some cooking utensils, a few cases of canned goods, and clothes hanging in a row.
"I'm not fixed up very well yet," he apologized; "I've been too busy at the saloon to waste time on living quarters. But it's comfortable enough for an old roadster like me, for I've bruised around the frontier so long that I've learned there's only three things necessary to a man's comfort—warm clothes, a full stomach, and a dry place to sleep. All the rest that goes to make a man content he has inside him, and I'm not the kind to be satisfied, no matter where I am or what I have. I never was that kind, so I just don't make the attempt."
He was talking to give her leeway, and when he had concocted a weak toddy, insisted that she must drink it, which she did listlessly, while he rambled on.
"I've noticed a few things in my life, Miss Necia, and one of them is that it often does a heap of good to let out and talk things over; not that a fellow gains any real advantage from disseminating his troubles, but it serves to sort of ease his mind. Folks don't often come to me for advice or sympathy. I don't have it to give, but maybe it will help you to tell me what caused this night-marauding expedition of yours." Seeing that she hesitated, he went on: "I suppose there's a lot of reasons why you shouldn't confide in me—I don't like that old man of yours, nor any of your friends; but maybe that's why I'm interested. If any of them has upset you, I'll take particular pleasure in helping you get even."
"I don't want to get even, and there is nothing to tell," said Necia, "except a girl's troubles, and I can't talk about them." She smiled a painful, crooked smile at him.
"Your old man has been rough to you?"