Adam pondered over this speech without reply. Words always came fluently when he was ready to speak. And he seemed more concerned over Virey’s caustic bitterness than over his meaning. Then, as he met the magnificent flash in Magdalene Virey’s eyes, he was inspired into revelation of Virey’s veiled hint and into a serenity he divined would be kindest to her pride.
“Go ahead and help her,” Virey went on. “You have my sincere felicitations. My charming wife is helpless enough. I never knew how helpless till we were thrown upon our own resources. She cannot even cook a potato. And as for baking bread in one of those miserable black ovens, stranger, if you eat some of it I will not be long annoyed by your attentions to her.”
“Well, I’ll teach her,” said Adam.
His practical response irritated Virey excessively. It was as if he wished to insult and inflame, and had not considered a literal application to his words.
“Who are you? What’s your name?” he queried, yielding to a roused curiosity.
“Wansfell,” replied Adam.
“Wansfell?” echoed Virey. The name struck a chord of memory—a discordant one. He bent forward a little, at a point between curiosity and excitement. “Wansfell?... I know that name. Are you the man who in this desert country is called Wansfell the Wanderer?”
“Yes, I’m that Wansfell.”
“I heard a prospector tell about you,” went on Virey, his haggard face now quickened by thought. “It was at a camp near a gold mine over here somewhere—I forget where. But the prospector said he had seen you kill a man named Mc something—McKin—no, McKue. That’s the name.... Did he tell the truth?”
“Yes, I’m sorry to say. I killed Baldy McKue—or rather, to speak as I feel, I was the means by which the desert dealt McKue the death justly due him.”