“I ken mostly eat anything. Get on with that talk.”
“Did you hear from my sister?”
“Sure. I got this registered mail when I went into Hartspool.”
The Irishman held out a bulging envelope.
Pryse set his fish to roast on the hot ashes and took the mail. He looked at it. Then he looked into the eyes of the man who had passed it to him.
“You haven’t opened it and—it’s addressed to you.”
Dan laughed.
“It ain’t a way I have looking into other folk’s affairs,” he said. “That’s from your sister in answer to the letter I put through for you. That bunch is for you. It’s not for me.”
“Yes. I know that. But—say, Dan Quinlan, you’re a big feller and a swell friend. Why?” Pryse shook his head. “Because your heart’s mostly as big as your fool body. There are things to life I can’t get a grip on. Here are you, living away up in the hills with no one near you for twenty-five miles. You got a poor sort of ranch homestead, and a bunch of stock that couldn’t hand you more than a bare existence. Why? Are you a hunter? Do you just love the crazy hills, with their storms, and snow, and cold? No. It’s not that. And I’m not going to ask things. I’m just going to say it’s a God’s mercy for me that you do live that way. If it hadn’t been that I fell into your place last fall, by a chance I can’t ever account for, I shouldn’t be alive and talking now. You’ve done for me what no ordinary fellow—but just one other, I know of—would have done for me. You showed me Three-Way Creek and found me this hiding-place when the Police got smelling around. And you’ve handed me feed and things at intervals ever since, like the ravens did for that boy in the Bible. You’ve done that for me I can never repay you for. And you’ve done it on my own story, without ever a question. And now you’ve completed your good work by getting me in touch with my sister.”
“Best get on with it, hadn’t you?”