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The giant with the rough voice and the boisterous ways is generally due for a stormy passage west of the Rockies; but the silent man with the gentle manners receives respect. Traditions live of desperadoes with exteriors of womanish calm and the action of devils. And Donnegan sipping his morning coffee fitted into the picture which rumor had painted.
"Lou, don't you hear me saying that I'll take the responsibility? If your father blames you let him tell me " He broke down in the middle of his sentence and another of those uncomfortable little pauses ensued. Donnegan knew that their eyes were miserably upon each other; the man tongue-tied by his guilt; the girl wretchedly guessing at the things which lay behind her fiancé's words.
"Even a corner of a rug to roll up in will do perfectly." "You see, it is impossible for me to entertain you." "Bare boards will do well enough for me, Colonel Macon. And if I have a piece of bread, a plate of cold beans anything I can entertain myself." "I am sorry to see you so compliant, Mr. Donnegan, because that makes my refusal seem the more unkind.
She attempted to speak once in a shaken voice, but he silenced her with a gesture, and after that she sat and watched in quiet the singular play of varying expressions across his face. Grief, rage, tenderness, murderous hate they followed like a puppet play. What was Donnegan to him? And then there was a tremor of fear.
How much the past tense may mean! "Poor fellow," murmured the sympathetic Donnegan. "But why," with gathering heat, "couldn't you help me to do the thing I can't do alone? Why couldn't you get him away from the house?" "With Joe Rix and the Pedlar guarding him?" "They'll be asleep in the middle of the night." "But Jack would wake up and make a noise."
"Call off your man!" warned Donnegan, for the big Negro had reined back; the gun already gleamed in his hand. A gesture from the gambler sent the gun into obscurity, yet still the fellow continued to fall back. "Tell him to ride ahead." "Keep in front, George." "And not too far." "Very well. And now?" "We'll talk later. Go straight on, George, to the clump of trees beyond the end of the street.
Very definitely Donnegan felt that the other was reading him. What was it that he saw as he turned the pages? "There is one thing you fail to take into your accounting." "Ah?" "I have an irresistible aversion to walking." "Ah?" repeated Macon. "Or exercise in any form." "Then you are unfortunate to be in this country without a horse." "Unfortunate, perhaps, but the fact is that I'm here.
For suppose that Donnegan wakened out of his sound sleep and observed the motion of the door; he would be suspicious if the door opened in a single continued motion; but if it worked in these degrees he would be hypersuspicious if he dreamed of danger. So the tramp gave five whole minutes to that work.
An outbreak of cursing, stamping, hair-tearing, shooting could not have affected big George as this quiet departure did. He followed, unordered, but as he stepped across the threshold of the hut he rolled up his eyes to the stars. "Oh, heavens above," muttered George, "have mercy on Mr. Donnegan. He ain't happy."
Just once his eyes rolled and flashed savagely in delight at the sensation that they were making, then the face of George was once again impassive. If Donnegan had not carried it off with a certain air, the whole entrance would have seemed decidedly stagey, but The Corner, as it was, found much to wonder at and little to criticize.
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