“I'll cry if I damn please!” Kerry snorted. “You old fool! Me a-draggin' you down to Garyville! Me, that's loved you like a brother! An' never had no thought—an' never had no thought—Oh, hell!” he broke off, at the bitter irony of the lie; then the sobs broke forth afresh. To deny that he had come to arrest the outlaw was so pitifully futile.
“So ye won't git the money that-a-way?” Andy's big voice ruminated, and a strange note of relief sounded in it; a curious gleam leaped into the sombre eyes. But he added, softly: “Sleep on it, bud; I'll let ye change your mind in the mornin'.”
“You shut your head!” screeched Kerry, fiercely, with a hiccough of wrenching misery. “You talk to me any more like that, an' I'll lambaste ye—er try to—big as ye are! Oh, damnation!”
The last night in the cave was one of gusty, moving breezes and brilliant moonlight, yet both its tenants slept profoundly, after their strange outburst of emotion. The first gray of dawn found them stirring, and Kerry making ready for his return journey. Together, as heretofore, they prepared their meal, then sat down in silence to eat it. Suddenly the mountain-man raised his eyes, to whose grave beauty the Irishman's temperament responded like that of a woman, and said, quietly,
“I'm a-goin' to tell ye somethin', an' then I'm a-goin' to show ye somethin'.”
Kerry's throat ached. In these two weeks he had conceived a love for his big, silent, gentle companion which rivalled even his devotion to Katy. The thought of leaving him helpless and alone, a common prey of reward-hunters, the remembrance of what Andy had said concerning his own despair beneath the terrible pressure of the mountain solitude, were almost more than Kerry could bear.
“Fust and foremost, Dan,” the other began, when the meal was finished, “I'm goin' to tell ye how come I done what I done. Likely you've hearn tales, an' likely they was mostly lies. You see, it was this-a-way: Me an' my wife owned land j'inin'. The Turkey Track Minin' Company they found coal on it, an' was wishful to buy. Her an' me wasn't wed then, but we was about to be, an' we j'ined in fer to sell the land an' go West.” His brooding eyes were on the fire; his voice—which had halted before the words “my wife,” then taken them with a quick gulp—broke a little every time he said “she” or “her.” Kerry's heart jumped when he heard the mention of that little Western farm—why, it might have been in the very locality he and Katy looked longingly toward.
“That feller they sent down here fer to buy the ground—Dickert was his name; you've hearn it, I reckon?”
Kerry recognized the murdered man's name. He nodded, without a word, his little blue eyes helplessly fastened on Andy's eyes.
“Yes, Dickert 'twas. He was took with Euola from the time he put eyes on her—which ain't sayin' more of him than of any man 'at see her. But a town feller's hangin' round a mounting-gal hain't no credit to her. Euola she was promised to me. But ef she hadn't 'a' been, she wouldn't 'a' took no passin' o' bows an' complyments from that Dickert. I thort the nighest way out on't was to tell the gentleman that her an' me was to be wed, an' that we'd make the deeds as man an' wife, an' I done so.”