“Smithy, when yuh go back to Totem, tell Jim Hork to wire Medicine Tree or Palm Lake for ca’tridges. Tell him to get plenty of thirty-thirties, forty-five seventies and a slough of forty-fours and forty-fives. If he can get us fifty pounds of dynamite, we’ll take that, too. That’s all, I reckon.”
The crowd of men filed out to their horses, where they mounted and rode away into the hills. Marsh Hartwell stood in the doorway of the ranch house, bulking big in the yellow light, and watched them ride away. He turned back into the smoky room and squinted at his wife, who stood just inside the room, one hand still holding the half-open dining-room door.
For several moments they looked at each other closely. Then she released the door and came toward him.
“Marsh, I heard what was said to Jack,” she said softly. “I was just outside that door.”
“Well?”
“You drove him away from here.”
“He drove himself away, Mother. When he married that——”
“He came to help you. After what you had done to him, he came to help you, Marsh. Blood is thicker than water.”
“Not his blood! Came to help me? More likely he came to see what he could hear.”
“Marsh! Do you think that Jack——?”