"And you took us into your ranch. Charity again, and you sailin' under Protestant colors, both of yez. The way mother prayed for Jesse was enough to scorch his bones." Billy chuckled. "I ain't religious—I drink, and mother's professin' Catholic cuts no figure with me.
"Then there's the fightin' between father's gang and Jesse's. Dad got hung, Jesse got the dollars. Rough, common, no-account, white trash, like mother an' me, hears Jesse expounding the Scriptures. We ain't got no feelings same as you."
Poor lad! Poor savage gentleman!
"You saved me from murdering Jesse, and got me away from that ranch. Since then I've followed the sea. There's worse men there than Jesse. I seen worse grub, worse treatment, worse times in general since I quit that ranch. Five years at sea—"
There was the glamour, the greatness of the sea in this lad's eyes, just as in Jesse's eyes. Sailors may be rugged, brutal, fierce—not vulgar. Men reach out into spaces where we sheltered women can not follow.
"Suppose I've grown," said Billy. "Well, mum, I got a notion to go home. Signed as A. B. in a four-masted bark Clan Innes out o' Glasgow, for Vancouver with general cargo. I quit her at Vancouver, made Ashcroft by C. P. R., blind baggage mostly, then hit the road afoot. I thought I'd take my departure from the Fifty-Nine."
"The old bush trail?"
"Hard goin', but then I expected, of course, mother'd be there at the ranch, and you, mum, an' Jesse, of course, and—"
"Jones?"
Dreading his news, I fought for this one little respite before he came to all I feared. If Jesse lived, if he only lived! But at thought of the old ranch life, Billy lapsed to a sheepish grin with one quaint glint of mischief. Then with the utmost gravity he asked me if Patsy, my nursemaid, "was claimed".