“Bad? About whom?”
“Parson Hunt and his sister Betty.”
“Betty Hunt?” muttered the mining man with an emphasis that would have told a woman of much less discernment than Rosabell Pickett all that was necessary.
“Yeppy. You like her, Joe Hurley. You want to look out for her. Somebody has got to. That Dick Beckworth——”
“Dick the Devil?”
“You said it! He’s got something on her.”
“He’s got something on Betty Hunt? Never!”
“No use layin’ your hand on your gun butt. It needs something besides that. When fire’s touched to the end of the fuse, no use tryin’ to stamp on the ashes. It is burning toward the powder barrel. The thing’s started. Dick’s told it about her——”
“Told what?” asked Hurley, almost shaking the girl.
“That she was married back East, long before she come out here, and is posing here as an unmarried woman. He says he knows the man that was married to her.”