A DUEL
"What's amiss with Keeko?"
The sick woman opened a pair of startled eyes. She half turned her face towards the darkened doorway.
Nicol was standing there. He had entered the room at that moment, but with a quiet unusual to him. She gazed at him without reply. Perhaps the activity of her brain was dulling. Perhaps she was searching the face, the sight of which she had learned in years to hate and fear.
It was a handsome face still, for all the man was approaching fifty. It was fleshy, and its dark beard did not improve it. But the eyes were keen and fine for all there was coldness and cruelty in their hard depths. The abundant moustache was without a tinge of grey in it, but it lacked trimness, and hung over a cruel mouth like a tattered curtain. The woman knew the value of these good looks, however. They served to mask a mind and heart that knew no scruple. So it was that her reply finally came in a quick apprehensive question.
"What d'you mean?" she gasped, in her spasmodic way. "What's she done?"
Nicol laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. He moved across to the bed and sprawled himself upon its foot, while his eyes searched the emaciated face as though some secret speculation was going on in his mind while he talked of other things.
"She held me up with a gun," he said slowly. "That's all. She held me up! Me! And she did it with a nerve I had to reckon was pretty fine. There were twenty or more of the darn Shaunekuks around. Guess I was mad at the time. But I had to laff after."
The unmoving eyes of the woman on the bed were reading him. No mood of his could deceive her. She had learned her lesson bitterly in something like seventeen years. The man was acting now. He was laughing over an incident which filled him with a consuming rage.
"You came here to tell me about it." The voice was faint with bodily weakness, but there was no weariness in the anxious watchfulness of her eyes. "Guess you'd best tell it. It's not your way to waste time in this room with anything pleasant to hand out. It's easier for me to listen, and nothing you can say can do me much hurt."