“No, it couldn’t, Sis.” Jim shook his head and laughed. “If we’d stayed around we’d have got mixed up with things, anyway. These things don’t happen because. They happen anyway. A feller’s going to get the marked-out tally someway. Fate’s got just so many kicks for every feller born. And he’s going to get ’em. Do you fancy hearing my plan?”
“Of course I do, Jim. I’ve been waiting. And I want you to know that there isn’t a thing in the world you can ask me that I won’t do for you.”
The man chuckled softly as he ate the last of his sweet.
“Fine,” he cried. “That fool loyalty again. Only it’s you this time, Sis.”
The girl smiled back at him.
“Don’t be absurd,” she said gently. “Get on with the thing I want to hear.”
“Well, for all I’ve got a million or so gold in my bank-roll I guess I was right down and out after getting clear of that red-coated boy, and looked like leaving my miserable bones feed for the coyotes. It was then I found it—in those two boys. One was a pretty tough, straight-thinking French-Canadian farmer, and the other was a broth of an Irish boy, whose only worry in life seemed to be he was scared to death of liquor, and scared worse that some time prohibition would make him have to live dry. Those two boys knew me for an escaped convict. Yet they kept me alive, fed me, and helped me all they knew to make a getaway. And they both did it for nix, and under threat of penitentiary for themselves. Say, those boys had a cargo of sheer sympathy and humanity aboard them enough to stock a heavenly department store, and the whole thing has given me a hunch. That hunch says I’m going to stake my last ounce of gold to help other ‘down-and-outs’ the same as they helped me. And I’ve come along now because I kind of hope you’ll help me. You see, a boy can do ordinary things. But when it comes to the real good things of life the girl’s got him beat out of sight.”
“There isn’t need to ask me, Jim,” the girl said, in a voice in which emotion came near to robbing it of steadiness. Then she laughed in self-defence. “You see, I’m one of those fool women who haven’t a notion beyond the men-folk belonging to them. My brothers have always been first with me. And now I sort of feel they’re more first than ever.”
Jim sat silent for a moment. His eyes were hidden as he contemplated the table. However he had been hit by the humanity and sympathy of those others, the utter and complete self-sacrifice of this sister, who dwelt in all the comfort and even luxury of her great home city, left him speechless for the moment.
At last he looked up. And when he did so the humour had faded out of his eyes. It had been replaced by a smile that was full of a world of tender gratitude.