I dared not ask about Jesse. To sit still was impossible, to play caged tiger up and down the room would only be ridiculous. Still, Billy's poisonous tobacco excused the opening of a window, so I stood with my back turned, while a November night closed on the river and the misty fields.
How could I leave my baby? How could I possibly break with Covent Garden—where my understudy, a fearsome female, ravened for the part? The cottage would never let before our river season. "Madame Scotson has been called abroad on urgent private business."
"Of course," the lad was saying, "when Polly got to be postmistress, she handled Jesse's letters, held the envelopes in the steam of a kettle until they'd open, and gummed them when she was through—if she sent them on. She found out who he dealt with and got them warned not to trust him. There's no letters now."
"She wouldn't dare!"
"No? You remember he sent you that book you wrote together at the ranch?"
"You know that!"
"I read it at Spite House. She had a heap of fun in the barroom with Jesse's letter. Her cat eyes flamed like mad."
"There was no letter."
"She made a paper house of it, and set it alight to show how Jesse burned her home in Abilene. She was drunk, too, that night. But that's nothin'. Glad you didn't hear them yarns she put about the country. Jesse wasn't never what I'd call popular, but he ain't even spoken to now by any white man. His riders quit, his Chinamen cleared out. Then she bought Brown's ferry, had the cable took away, the scow sent adrift, and Surly Brown packed off. She'd heard that Jesse lived by his rifle, so she's cut him off from his hunting grounds. There's nothing left to hunt east of the Fraser."
"He's starving?"