“He swore he was comin’ back, like young Lochinvar, and marry me some day, and I was all tickled to think he would do it. 115
“Then, would you believe it, the murdering villain rides away about half an hour before the mob comes and goes south toward the mountains. Next day or so, we pick up your father, shot something terrible, and this awful ‘Louisiana’ Delaney had done it, in cold blood and just to be killing something.”
“Ah!” Mademoiselle stiffened and quivered. Her voice was like brass. “In cold blood, you say? Then he had no provocation? He was not an enemy of my father?”
“Naw. Your father didn’t have no enemies. So far as I know, this Louisiana didn’t even know him. He was a cattleman and they hated the sheepmen, you know, and used to fight them. Then, he was one of these gunmen, always shooting some one, and they used to be terrible. They’d kill some one just for the fun of it—to sort of keep in practice.”
Mademoiselle shuddered, envisioning some bloodthirsty, evil thing, unspeakably depraved. But it was momentary. She spoke again in her metallic voice.
“That is well to know. I will look for this Louisiana.”
“You ain’t likely to find him. He never was seen or heard of around here no more. I’ve heard granddad call him ‘the last of the gunmen,’ because the country was settling up and getting civilized then. One thing sure, he never made good on that Lochinvar sketch, I can promise you.” 116
“It is no matter. He will come back—or I will follow him. It is of another matter I would talk. There was something of a mine that my father had found.”
“I’ve heard of that,” said Wilding. “It’s quite a legend around here. The Lunch Rock mine, they call it, and Jim Banker, the prospector, looks for it every year.”
“But he ain’t found it——”