“Are you the Tolliver girl’s father?” asked Larson.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we got bad news for you. She’s sick.”
“Sick?” the trapper’s lips trembled.
“A mighty sick girl. This man here—this Houck, if that’s what he calls himself—took her away from the young fellow she’d married and started up to Brown’s Park with her. Somehow she gave him the slip, swam the river, an’ came back to town barefoot through the snow. Seems she lost her shoes while she was crossin’ the Blanco.”
The color washed away beneath the tan of the father’s face. “Where’s she at?”
“Here—at the hotel. Mrs. Gillespie an’ Doc Tuckerman are lookin’ after her.”
“I’d like to go to her right away.”
“Sure. Dud, you know where the room is. Take Mr. Tolliver there.”
“Pete.” Houck’s voice was hoarse, but no longer defiant. In this little man, whom he had always bullied and dominated, whose evil genius he had been, lay his hope of life. “Pete, you ain’t a-going to leave yore old pardner to be hanged.”