There had been a noon-mark in the doorway of the cave, thrown by the shadow of a boulder beside it, even before the Irishman's big nickel watch came with its bustling, authoritative tick to bring the question of time into the mountains. But the two men kept uncertain hours: sometimes they talked more than half the night, the close-cropped, sandy poll and the unshorn crest of Jove-like curls nodding at each other across the fire, then slept far into the succeeding day; sometimes they were up before dawn and off after squirrels—with which poor Kerry had no better luck than with the birds. Every day the Irishman dressed his host's hand; and every day he tasted more fully the charm of this big, strong, gentle, peaceful nature clad in its majestic garment of flesh.
“If he'd 'a' been an ugly, common-looking brute, I'd 'a' nabbed him in a minute,” he told himself, weakly. And every day the handcuffs under the dried fern-leaves lay heavier upon his soul.
On the 20th of September, which Kerry had set for his last day in the cave, he was moved to begin again at the beginning and tell the big mountaineer all his affairs.
“Ye see, it's like this,” he wound up: “Katy—the best gurrl an' the purtiest I ever set me two eyes on—she's got a father that'll strike her when the drink's with him. He works her like a dog, hires her out and takes every cent she earns. Her mother—God rest her soul!—has been dead these two years. And now the old man is a-marryin' an' takin' home a woman not fit for my Katy to be with. I says when I heard of it, says I: `Katy, I'll take ye out o' that hole. I'll do the trick, an' I'll git the reward, an' it's married we'll be inside of a month, an' we'll go West.' That's what brought me up here into the mountains—me that was born, as ye might say, on the stair-steps of a tenement-house, an' fetched up the same.”
Absorbed in the interest of his own affairs, the Irishman did not notice what revelations he had made. Whether or not this knowledge was new to his host the uncertain light of the dying fire upon that grave, impassive face did not disclose.
“An' now,” Kerry went on, “I've been thinkin' about Katy a heap in the last few days. I'm goin' home to her to-morry—home to Philadelphy—goin' with empty hands. An' I'm a-goin' to say to her, 'Katy, would ye rather take me jest as I am, out of a job'—fer that's what I'll be when I go back,—'would ye rather take me so an' wait fer the little farm?' I guess she'll do it; I guess she'll take me. I've got that love fer her that makes me think she'll take me. Did ye ever love a woman like that?”—turning suddenly to the silent figure on the other side of the fire. “Did ye ever love one so that ye felt like ye could jest trust her, same as you could trust yourself? It's a—it—well, it's a mighty comfortable thing.”
The mountaineer stretched out his injured hand, and examined it for so long a time without speaking that it seemed as though he would not answer at all. The wound was healing admirably now; he had made shift to shoot, with Kerry's shoulder for a rest, and their larder was stocked with game once more. When he at last raised his head and looked across the fire, his black eyes were such wells of misery as made the other catch his breath.
Upon the silence fell his big, serious voice, as solemn and sonorous as a church-bell: “You ast me did I ever love an' trust a woman like that. I did—an' she failed me. I ain't gwine to call you fool fer sich; you're a town feller, Dan, with smart town ways; mebby your gal would stick to you, even ef you was in trouble; but me—”
Kerry made an inarticulate murmur of sympathy.
The voice went on. “You say you're goin' home to her with jest your two bare hands?” it inquired. “But why fer? You've found your man. What makes you go back that-a-way?”