“You meant to live with her?”
“I meant to treat her right,” was the sullen reply.
“But livin’ with her, an’ her another man’s wife.”
“No, sir. That fake marriage with Dillon don’t go. She was promised to me.” He broke out suddenly in anger: “What’s eatin’ you all? Why don’t you go out an’ help me find the girl? These whatfors an’ whyfors can wait, I reckon.”
Blister dropped a bomb. “She’s found.”
“Found!” Houck stared at the fat man. “Who found her? Where? When?”
“Coupla hours ago. Here in this r-room. Kinda funny how she’d swim the river a night like this an’ walk eight-ten miles barefoot in the snow, all to get away from you, an’ her goin’ with you of her own accord.”
“It wasn’t eight miles—more like six.”
“Call it six, then. Fact is, Mr. Houck, she was mighty scared of you—in a panic of terror, I’d say.”
“She had no call to be,” the Brown’s Park settler replied, his voice heavy with repressed rage. “I’m tellin’ you she wasn’t right in her head.”