“What's that in your—ain't that a pistol in your hip-pocket, Jeff Warren?” she demanded, while her weaker sister stared in slow, childlike wonder.
Impulsively and somewhat guiltily Warren slapped his hand on his bulging pocket and turned, blinking doggedly at the questioner.
“That's what it is!” he answered. His tone was sullen and defiant.
“Whar did you get it?” Amanda was now on her feet, leaning toward him in the meager light.
“I swapped my watch for it,” Jeff muttered; and he drew the brim of his hat lower over his burning eyes.
“Your watch!” Amanda cried. “Why, what are we goin' to do for a timepiece now? Besides, we didn't have to go armed all along that lonely mountain road; what is the need of a pistol here in the edge of town, among old friends an' law-abidin' neighbors?”
“That's my business,” Warren snarled, and he turned out into the dark. “Folks will know it's my business, too. You jest lie low an' see if they don't. I'll take care of number one.”
“I know how you'll take care of number one,” Amanda sneered. “It will be by ignorin' number three, like you always have done when you get the devil in you as big as the side of a house. Right now you are just itchin' for a row with somebody, an' you are goin' to have it if I don't take you in hand.”
Warren's innate gallantry checked the hot outburst, the forerunner of which was quivering on his white lips, and without a word he went back to the well and stood with his hand on the windlass, a pitiful symbol of human discontent outlined against the star-strewn sky.
“I ain't a-goin' to put my hands in dish-water till my mind's at ease,” Amanda said to her sister. “Poor thing! I reckon you feel so bad about the way we are fixed that you ain't bothered about Jeff's fits: But it's different with your sister Mandy. When you was a young gal I worried about whether you'd git married or not. Later I was bothered about your first choice an' his jealous suspicions. Next I turned into a wet-nurse; I walked the floor with your baby at night, stickin' splinters in my feet at every step, an' now I've got to keep your last investment from danglin' from the gallows like a scarecrow on a pole.”