"Shouldn't wonder."
"Billy!"
"Yes'm."
"How soon can I get a ship?"
"None before Saturday."
"Go on. Tell me the worst."
"The signs may read coarse weather or typhoon. I dunno which yet. She's been locatin' settlers along them old clearings in the black pine and, judging by samples I'd seen, she swept the jails."
"Why more than one?" I asked, "why all that expense when one would do?"
"Who'd blackmail Polly afterward? She's no fool. She says straight out in public she'd shoot the man who killed him. But them thugs is planted in hungry land, they see his pastures the best in the district, and you know as well as I do he's a danger to all robbers. Why, even when sportsmen and tourists comes along his old gun gets excited. He hates the sight of strangers, anyway.
"Now, all these years she's goading him to loose out and break the law. That's why she's got the constable protecting her at Spite House. Once she can get him breaking the law she has all them thugs—so many dollars a head—as witnesses. It ain't murder she wants. She says that when she went to his ranch that time Jesse sent her a message by old Mathson, 'I won't let her off with death.'