“I can’t tell her nothin’ no more than you can,” said Banker. “She’s got Ike Brandon’s letters, ain’t she? He told her where it was, didn’t he? What’s she comin’ to me fer? I don’t know nothin’.”
“Were you here when my father was killed?” Solange asked, kindly. She felt sorry for the old fellow.
“Hey! What’s that? Was I here? No’m, I wasn’t here! I was—I reckon I was over south of the range, out on the desert. I don’t know nothin’ about the killin’.”
He was looking furtively at her veil, his eyes shifting away and back to it, awed by the mystery of the hidden eyes. He was like a wild, shy animal, uneasy in this place and among these people so foreign to his natural environment.
Solange sighed. “I am sorry, monsieur,” she said. “I had hoped you could tell me more.”
He broke in again with his whining voice. “It was this here Louisiana, every one says.”
“Louisiana! Yes——” Solange’s tones became fierce and she leaned closer to the dry desert rat, who shrank from her. “And when I find him—when I find this man who shot my father like a dog——”
Her voice was tense and almost shrill, cutting like steel. 120
“I shall kill him!”
The dim, veiled face was close to Banker’s. He raised his corded, lean hand to the corded, lean throat as though he was choking. He stared at her fixedly, his shifty eyes for once held steady. There was horror and fear in the back of them. He put one foot back, shifted his weight to it, put the other back, then the first again, slowly retreating backward, with his stricken eyes still on her. Then he suddenly whirled about and scuttled down the stairs as though the devil were after him.