“He told me he wasn’t,” replied Akerley, pouring molasses on his cakes. “He said he would stay where he was—where I met him—as long as his grub hung out.”
His hearers did not make the slightest effort to hide their astonishment.
“Ye’re crazy!” exclaimed the old man. “What’s the matter with him, that he ain’t comin’ here? He’s been here often enough before, durn his pesky hide!”
Akerley looked fairly into the girl’s eyes for a moment, then turned his glance back to her grandfather.
“He doesn’t consider himself fit to be seen either here or back where he came from,” he said. “He has a black eye, a cut cheek, a swollen ear, a split lip and a skinned nose.”
“He run agin the devil, that’s sure!”
“You’re wrong. He started roughing it with me, when I was sitting as quiet and polite as you please, smoking my pipe. He asked for it. But for my hurt shoulder I’d have given him more than he asked for.”
“What’s that ye say? Walloped Ned Tone! Bested the heaviest hitter on Injun River an’ split his lip! Stranger, I wisht it was true—but it ain’t. It couldn’t be done by no one man as ever I see—leastwise not since my own j’ints begun to stiffen. Young man, ye’re a liar.”
“Grandfather!” exclaimed Catherine.
“That’s as may be—but it is no lie when I tell you I pounded the pep out of Ned Tone,” replied Akerley. “You can go and see for yourself. You’ll find him at the edge of the road, about two miles from here.”