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Updated: June 23, 2025
She would be going out to do a little shopping, ostensibly, and she would hope to encounter him on the street, either coming or going. However, her earnest planning proved to be of no avail. Fectnor was nowhere to be seen. She walked rather leisurely through the town moving barely fast enough to avoid the appearance of loitering.
It seemed inevitable that she should talk to Fectnor in his own language. "I don't care anything about your marriage," he said. "A bit of church flummery. Use your brains, Sylvia. You know that couldn't make any difference." "I'm not thinking about the flummery. That isn't it. It's the fact that I love the man I married." "All very well and good. But you know you used to love me."
"That would sound a little more impressive, Fectnor," she said, "if I didn't know what brought you to Eagle Pass just now, and how you sweat for the pay you got." This was unfortunately said, for there was malice in it, and a measure of injustice. He heard her calmly. "This election business is only a side-line of mine," he replied. "I enjoy it.
Was he the sort of man who would place discretion first and pocket an insult? Oddly, the fear that he would attack Fectnor changed to a fear that he did not intend to do so. She could not bear to think of the man she loved as the sort of man who will not fight, given such provocation as Harboro had. She opened her eyes to look at him, to measure him anew. But he was no longer in the room.
Nothing in his face or carriage betrayed his purpose, and the man with the blue-serge garment on his arm kept his ground complacently. The man with the horse mounted and rode away. Harboro advanced easily until he was within arm's length of the other man in the street. "You're Fectnor, aren't you?" he asked. "I am," replied the other crisply. Harboro regarded him searchingly.
And some of those young fellows the soldiers and railroaders I don't suppose any of them have got anything on you, either?" "They haven't, Fectnor!" she exclaimed hotly. She resolved to have nothing more to say to him. She felt that his brutality gave her the right to have done with him. And then her glance was arrested by his powerful hand, where it lay on the table beside him.
She reasoned shrewdly: Harboro wasn't the sort of man people would tell things to about her. They would know what to expect: intense passion, swift punishment. And yet as she watched Antonia go away down the road, suggesting supine submission rather than a friend in need, her heart failed her. Had she done wisely? Fectnor had never stepped aside for any man.
She was the sort of woman who might be expected to get her husband into trouble, and Fectnor was the kind of man who might easily appeal to her imagination. This was the common verdict; and the town concluded that it was an interesting affair the more so because nearly all the details had to be left to the imagination.
Then he seemed to stumble, and in two swift leaps he had gained the inner side of the walk and had darted into the inset of the saloon. He was out of sight in a flash. As if by some feat in legerdemain Harboro's weapon was in his hand; but it was a hand that trembled slightly. He had allowed Fectnor to gain an advantage. He stared fixedly at that place where Fectnor had disappeared.
Why shouldn't she hope that the future was hers, to do with as she would or, at least, as she could? That her fate now lay in her own hands, and not in every passing wind of circumstance, seemed possible, even probable. If only.... A name came into her mind suddenly; a name carved in jagged, sinister characters. If only Fectnor would stay away off there in the City.
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