“That is one reason,” he replied. “The fact is, I should not like any one from outside to find any trace of the old bus around here. It might prove very awkward for me. The less known about me and the machine the better for me, Miss MacKim. If I tell you why I’ll put myself at your mercy—which I shall do sometime when we can talk in more security. Now I think I had better milk and do the chores.”
“Are you in danger?” she whispered.
“I shall be glad to explain my position to you, as far as possible, at the first opportunity,” he answered, smiling. “But there are other things to do now that need to be done quick—the milking, for one—and if I could get hold of your grandfather’s ammunition I’d extract the charge from every cartridge. Then I’d feel less uneasy. My nerves are not in the best shape, as it is.”
She went to the front door with him and instructed him to keep out of line of the old man’s window, not to bring the milk to the house but to leave it on the floor of the larger barn, and to remain in the barn until he saw her again.
“And I’ll bring you every rifle-cartridge I can find,” she concluded.
He thanked her and started off to attend to the cows; but before he had gone a dozen paces he turned and came back to where she still stood on the threshold.
“I had forgotten the milk-pails,” he explained.
After milking and turning the cows out, he fed the pigs. He could not feed the calves, for he had not brought their breakfast of hay-tea and skimmed milk from the house. He retired to the barn then and gave his mind to very serious and painful thought.
“What’s the use?” he exclaimed, at last. “Thinking won’t undo what’s already done. The past is out of my hands—and I hope to heaven it is buried! I can only help myself in the future.”
The girl found him a few minutes later. She carried a small basket containing sixty cartridges.