“It won’t take long,” he said. “The police boys are getting around Dan’s place.”
“Why?”
“That’s easy. Hartspool and Calford are worried. It’s our sales of cattle. But it’s not that. I’ve seen a—spook.”
Blanche made a little impatient gesture.
“Cut out the spooks, Jim, and tell me the story quickly.”
“Sure.”
But Jim smoked on for a few moments longer.
“No. It was no spook. We can cut them out,” he said at last. “What I’ve seen was real human flesh and blood. And it was the one person I wasn’t yearning to see, or who should see me. I can’t get his name. I only heard it once. But it was that police boy who was toting me along down for a rest cure in penitentiary when I made my getaway. I saw him two evenings ago as I was beating it back here from Dan’s place. Yes. He wasn’t any spook, but just the boy I recognised right away, for all he wasn’t wearing uniform. And he recognised me, even though my hair’s as white as a summer cloud. It wasn’t near Dan’s place either, so I can’t say for sure he’d been along up there. But he was heading from that direction.” He laughed. “Queer, eh? I mean the chance of it. We hit head on to each other right down there on the creek in Dan’s valley. It was a few miles up from that little girl’s farm, where we turn off up into these hills at the mouth of Three-Way Creek. If he’d been a half a minute before, or I’d been the same later, we’d have missed. And in these hills, too, where you could lose an army like nothing. Makes you wonder about Fate, doesn’t it? Makes you feel like two cents trying to fix things the way you need ’em.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“Nope.” Jim’s smile deepened. “But somehow the whole thing tickled me plumb to death. I just had to grin. I grinned into his queer dark face, and——”