“Eh?”
He stepped up to her and stood, his face within a few inches of hers.
“So that’s it, is it? You’d give me away. You!” He shook his head slowly, all his purpose plainly written in his furious eyes. “You won’t give me away. I’ll see to that. For two pins I’d silence you now, only––only it isn’t what I want. But don’t make a mistake, you won’t give me away. Sit down. Sit down right there in the chair behind you.”
He stood over her, compelling her with the force behind his command, and the terrified woman found herself obeying him against her will. She almost fell into the chair. Then the man turned back to the door and secured it.
“We don’t want any one buttin’ in,” he said. “I’ve got to do a big talk first, then I get goin’.”
He came back and stood beside the stove, opposite her, so that he could look right down into her face and watch the effect of his words. He was brimful of a merciless project, which was to be carried out partly for her edification, partly for his own revenge, and wholly for the satisfaction of the devilish nature within him, which now, let fully loose, swayed him beyond any thought of consequences.
“See here, you’ve been my Jonah right along. I never had a cent’s worth of luck since I got scratching around your fence,” he began, almost quietly. Only was the threat in his eyes. “I don’t guess I can say just how things happened––I mean how things got going wrong 320 with me, unless it was you. I’m going to tell you straight when it happened. I got mean when I was fool enough to guess I was sweet on you. Jim Thorpe was sweet on you too. I got mean toward him. We shot a target for first chance to ask you to marry. He won. I got in ahead, and, like a fool, married you. That was the beginning. An’ I didn’t feel any less mean after. Yes, you were my Jonah, sure. I couldn’t work those first days ’cos of you, an’ after I didn’t guess I wanted to. But it set me savage I didn’t want to. Well, I’m not here to tell you all the things that followed. You know them as well as me. But there’s things you don’t know. After you got hurt that night it was Peter Blunt who drove me out of Barnriff with threats of kicking me out, and setting the townsfolk on me for the way I’d treated you. But Jim was behind it. He didn’t do the talkin’ to me––Peter did that. But Jim came in that night to see you. I found that out. Say, I was mad. I was mad at Jim Thorpe, and not Peter, for I read his doing in my own way. Y’see I was still a fool, an’ still sweet on you. But I saw how I could get back on him. I’d been at work some time on the cattle-duffing, an’ I saw just how I could hurt him too.
“Say, cattle-duffing’s a great gambol, an’ I don’t regret it. I’m going to keep on at it––only elsewhere. Well, I got hold of Master Jim’s brand. I got kit as like he wears as two cents, in case I was located. We’re alike in figure–––”
“But, thank God, there’s no other resemblance.”
Eve’s scathing comment came with startling suddenness. Her terror was passing, and only she felt a great loathing for this man.