“’Lo, Jake,” he said. “Back again, eh?”
“Yep. Finished my business. I got to have a talk with you, Pete.”
Tolliver slid a troubled gaze at him. What did Jake want? Was it money—hush money? The trapper did not have fifty dollars to his name, nor for that matter twenty.
“’S all right, Jake. If there’s anything I can do for you—why, all you got to do’s to let me know,” he said uneasily.
Houck laughed, derisively. “Sure. I know how fond you are of me, Pete. You’re plumb glad to see me again, ain’t you? Jes’ a-honin’ to talk over old times, I’ll bet.”
“I’d as lief forget them days, Jake,” Tolliver confessed. “I done turned over another chapter, as you might say. No need rakin’ them up, looks like.”
The big man’s grin mocked him. “Tha’s up to you, Pete. Me, I aim to be reasonable. I ain’t throwin’ off on my friends. All I want’s to make sure they are my friends. Pete, I’ve took a fancy to yore June. I reckon I’ll fix it up an’ marry her.”
His cold eyes bored into Tolliver. They held the man’s startled, wavering gaze fixed.
“Why, Jake, you’re old enough to be her father,” he presently faltered.
“Maybe I am. But if there’s a better man anywheres about I’d like to meet up with him an’ have him show me. I ain’t but forty-two, Pete, an’ I can whip my weight in wild cats.”