"Shore," Mayfield nodded. "I promise. You're a good feller, Little Buck, a dang good feller."
Mayfield had expected anything but mercy. But he was not too bewildered to grind his teeth and fling a vile, whispered curse at the door when Wolfe closed it behind him.
When Wolfe went back to the veranda, the lights had been cut off to keep away a swarm of annoying summer beetles. He saw that the colonel and a slender figure in white sat in rockers near the front steps.
"Miss Singleton—who wants me to call her Tot, like everybody else does—" began Colonel Mason, "has told me about the difficulties you had and—er, expect to have. It looks bad, Arnold; there's no denying it. You can't arrest and imprison your own people, of course. Frankly, I don't quite see how you're going to manage it, son."
Wolfe stepped to the veranda post and put his back to it.
"You've always believed in me," he said earnestly. "I want you to continue to believe in me. I'm not to the barrier yet. There are six miles of narrow-gauge road to be built before the barrier is reached—the Devil's Gate, you know. No use worrying over things in the distance, father, eh? This is what I've got to do—when I get to the barrier, I'll cross it, or go under it, around it, or through it. I don't know how. I know only that it must be done."
"By George, sir!" The colonel brought a hand down on his knee for emphasis. "Of course, I'll keep faith in you! That pass—the Devil's Gate—was beautifully named, wasn't it? But there's one thing, Arnold, I must ask you to remember. That your life is of more value to us, infinitely, than our money. Don't forget it, son."
There followed a few minutes of silence save for the night song of a mocking bird somewhere in the maples. Then Tot Singleton, who now wore shoes and stockings and a white dress that Mrs. Mason had found for her, sat up straight in her chair and addressed the dimly-shining officer's shield.
"Let me tell you, Little Buck," she said, "you'll shorely wish you'd put Cat-Eye Mayfield in jail the minute you got to town. I'd bet my life ag'in a safety-pin 'at Cat-Eye Mayfield ain't in the house right now. As long as he can go whar he pleases, yore life ain't wo'th nothin'. I tell you, after you've done what you've done tonight fo' him, he'd foller you to the bottomest hole in Tophet to git to shoot you in the back. Hate you? Why, he's hated you ever sence he can rickollect. It's all the' is to him, that hate fo' you. As Grandpap Singleton says, the sourest vinegar in the world is made out o' molasses—a-meanin', o' course, hate made out o' l-love. Cat-Eye thinks he l-loves me, y' know——"
If the lights had been on, they would have seen that she was blushing terribly; she had made a bad mess, she thought, of telling them how it was.