“Perhaps I’m stupid. You’ll have to be a great deal clearer before I can understand you.”
“I’ve noticed that it’s a lot easier to understand what you want to than what you don’t want to.”
Sharply a thought smote her. “Have you seen Phil Norris lately?”
“No, I haven’t. Do you think it likely that he would confess?”
“Confess?” she faltered.
“I see I’ll have to start at the beginning, after all. It’s pretty hard to say just where that is. It might be when Morse got hold of your father’s claim, or another fellow might say it was when the Boone-Bellamy feud began, and that is a mighty long time ago.”
“The Boone-Bellamy feud,” echoed the girl.
“Yes. The real name of our friend Norris is Dunc Boone.”
“He’s no friend of mine.” She flamed it out with such intensity that he was surprised.
“Glad to hear it. I can tell you, then, that he’s a bad lot. He was driven out of Arkansas after a suspected murder. It was a killing from ambush. They couldn’t quite hang it on him, but he lit a shuck to save his skin from lynchers. At that time he was a boy. Couldn’t have been more than seventeen.”