“It don’t. But if it had been anythin’ but an ace, it would have busted the Eagle.”
“The divil looks after his own—mebby,” grinned Scotty.
“With a little personal assistance,” laughed Chuck. “But it’s nothin’ to us. Personally, I like Angel. The old man is a hard character. But as far as that’s concerned, none of us are growin’ any wings.”
Later on in the evening Billy DuMond came to town, and Angel took him to the hotel to see Lila. DuMond didn’t want to go. He had been sure to find out that Rance McCoy was not in town before he would come in, and he didn’t want to say anything more. But Angel insisted that he tell Lila all he knew about it.
They went up to Lila’s room, and Billy DuMond slouched on the edge of a hard chair, doubling his old hat in his nervous hands.
“Like I told Angel—I dunno anythin’,” he said to Lila. “I jist heard things a long time ago, and I—I prob’ly was drunk when I told Angel what I did.”
“What did you tell Angel?” asked Lila.
DuMond twisted the hat a few more times.
“Well, I dunno how true it is. A feller told me a long time ago that you wasn’t Rance McCoy’s girl. He said yore name was Stevens, and that old Rance killed yore father in a gun-fight. You was a little baby, I reckon, and there wasn’t no place to put yuh. Angel’s mother jist died a while before that, and somehow old Rance kinda adopted yuh.”
“And that is all you know about it?”