Jim’s eyes searched ahead, where the forest broke, giving way to the grass flat which he remembered to have been the grazing-ground of Molly’s truant cows. And Blanche watched the cold, hard light take possession of them.
“No,” he went on. “It’s not our show that worries me a thing. It’s that little girl, with her eyes as innocent as a child’s. It’s the thing you tell me of her. It’s the thing that cur has done to her. Don’t you see, Sis? She’s her father’s daughter, the man who helped me when all help seemed impossible. But that’s not all. I want that little girl for myself. And I—I feel like making a break for her place right now.”
“What could you do, Jim?” Blanche asked anxiously.
She was troubled at the mood which she recognised lying behind the man’s manner. Jim shook his head.
“That’s the trouble,” he said almost moodily. “What could I do that would help her? You see, she loves that skunk. It seems queer, Sis. There’s just nothing I wouldn’t do to help her, and I’m helpless as a babe. Half the time it’s that way with things. The real opportunity to help is the rarest thing in our lives. Out of some sort of generous, fool impulse we jump in and act, and it’s only once in a century the thing a feller does that way is real help. Look at this, now. There’s that poor, lone girl. She’s grieving and sick. Money? It’s no sort of use to her. It’s unthinkable. She’s not looking for that help. Can I pass her back her man? Not a thing. And she’s sick in body and mind. Is there anything I could do, or say, that would heal those? It sets me crazy to think the way I’m fixed. Her father’s always in my mind. So are that kid’s pretty eyes, and her figure, that’s so like yours. Say, she’s a babe—a babe of these hills; and I can’t pass her the hand of comfort I’m yearning to.”
Blanche was closely observing, and she read the depths of emotion that were driving him so hard. His grief was all unconcealed. The sorrowful regret in his tone and words hurt her.
“But do you make it that he really has deserted her?” she asked, seeking the best she could find in the darkness of it all. “You don’t think he’s taken to the trail for the while, looking for you? It occurred to me it might be so. And when he was through he’d get back to her. For obvious reasons I couldn’t say that to either Molly or Lightning.”
Jim shook his head again.
“If you think that way, Sis, you don’t know men,” he said quietly. “But you don’t think that. I guess you think the way I’m thinking. You’re trying to find hope for that little kid, and there isn’t a cent’s worth that way. A boy can hate another good. He can yearn to avenge an injury all the time. But, even so, the girl that boy loves is first turn, surely. Certainly it would be in this case. Where’s the reason in not telling her the thing he’s doing? If he’s to spend months chasing me up, why not tell Molly, and save her grieving? Why quit his farm? Why sell it up? Why a mystery? He’s quit her. He’s quit her cold, Sis. He was crazy for her; she was crazy for him. Yet he quits her cold, without a quarrel, right after that dance. That boy needs gun-play.”
They rode on in silence. They had crossed the blue grass flat. They had re-entered the woods. And now their way carried them into the mouth of the gorge of Three-Way Creek.