“It wasn't that—to-day,” she said, her eyes raised to his in a glance that, somehow, went straight to his heart. “I'll tell you, Nelson. As I came on, I had just reached Sim Tompkins's field, where he was planting com and burning stumps, when a negro—one of Captain Duncan's hands—passed on a mule. I didn't hear what he said, but when I came to Sim he had stopped ploughing and was leaning over the fence, saying, 'Awful, horrible,' and so on. I asked him what had happened, and he told me.” The girl dropped her eyes, her words hung in her throat, and she put a slender, tapering, though firm and sun-browned, hand to her lips.
“Go on,” Floyd urged her. “Tompkins said—”
“He said”—Cynthia swallowed—“that you and Jeff Wade had had words in front of the store and that Wade had shot and killed you. I—I—didn't stop to inquire of any one—I thought it was true—and came on here. When I saw you just then absolutely unharmed, I—I—of course it surprised me—or, I mean—”
“How ridiculous!” Floyd laughed mechanically. “There is some mistake, Cynthia. People always get things crooked. That shows how little truth there is in reports. Wade came in here and paid his bill, and did not even speak to me, or I to him.”
“But I heard the shots myself, away down the road,” said the girl; “and as I got near the store I saw a group of men in front of the door. They were pointing down at the sidewalk, and one of them said, 'Jeff stood right there and fired three times.'”
Floyd laughed again, while her lynx eyes slowly probed his face. He pointed at the court-house door. “Cynthia, do you see that envelope? Wade was shooting at it. I haven't been over to see yet, but they say he put three balls close together in its centre. We ought to incorporate this place into a town, so that a thing of this sort wouldn't be allowed.”
“Oh, that was it!” Cynthia exclaimed, in a full breath of relief. “I suppose you think I'm a goose to be so scared at nothing.”
His face clouded over, his eyes went down. A customer was going into the store, and he walked on to the street corner with her before replying. Then he said: “I'm glad, though, Cynthia, that you felt badly, as I see you did, when you thought I was done for. Good-bye, I am going to beg you to let me see you again before long, even if your mother does object.”
As they walked away out of his sight Pole Baker lowered his shaggy head to his brawny hands, his elbows resting on his knees.
“Demed fool!” he exclaimed. “Right now, with his head in the very jaws o' death, he goes on talkin' sweet stuff to women. A purty face, a saft voice, an' a pair o' dreamy eyes would lead that man right into the fire o' hell itself. But that hain't the p'int. Pole Baker, he's yore friend, an' Jeff Wade is a-goin' to kill 'im jest as shore as preachin'.”