“We were bein’ trailed on our way here,” he said significantly.
Jim shrugged.
“McFardell’s been trailing us weeks,” he said quietly. “He and I met down near Molly’s farm, and he’s been trailing me ever since. It’s not that worries me. If it did, I’d only need to have the folk beat up this territory till we’d run him to earth. And he wouldn’t get a dog’s chance to do the thing he reckons to do. It’s not that. It’s Molly I’m thinking of.”
Lightning stirred uneasily in his chair. He watched the setting of Jim’s jaws. He observed the abrupt change in the eyes he had seen so full of kindliness. So he waited.
But Jim seemed in no hurry to continue. He was measuring the queer creature that bore so deep a hallmark of the uncouth manhood that had served him in his sixty years of hard life. He was wondering. With an almost crazy disregard for consequences he had put into Lightning’s hands power to undo for him all the labours of the past years. The reason he had done it was the better to be able to help Molly, whom he knew now needed all the help he could give her. He needed this man’s complete trust and he believed he could inspire it. Now, dared he tell him the rest? Dared he?
Yes. Molly must remain where she was. It was absolutely imperative. Therefore there was only one course open to him—the truth, the simple truth.
“No,” he said at last, “I don’t want to be through with that feller yet. The longer he hangs around spying these hills the better.”
“Why?”
The word was jerked at him.
“We’ll know where he is,” Jim went on. “We’ll be the better able to get our hands on him.”