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He went into McAlpin like a human pile driver, and threw him back for a loss of four yards. The goal was safe and the ball belonged to the Blues on their ten yard line. It had been a close call, and a murmur of disappointment went up from the Army partisans, while the Blue stands rocked with applause.
But," he asserted cryptically, "I happen to know that wasn't so." "Then what did he go down there for?" demanded Nan indignantly, but not warily. McAlpin, the situation now in hand, took his time to it. He leaned forward in a manner calculated to invite confidence without giving offense. "Miss Nan," said he simply, "I worked for your Uncle Duke for five years you know that."
It was already pretty clear to her that de Spain had not ridden unarmed to where she found him to ambush any of the Morgans. He was not dead; but he was not far from it if McAlpin was right and if she could credit her own senses in looking at him. What ought she to do? Other things McAlpin had said crowded her thoughts.
She smelled the odour of his wet clothing, felt his breath, and she shrank back a step. "This this body, Jerry-Jo McAlpin," she whispered, "is all you can touch. That, I will kill to-morrow the next day it does not matter. But the soul of me shall haunt you while you live. Night and day it shall torment and clutch you until it brings your sinful spirit to to God!"
But she listened with interest, more or less veiled, to whatever running comment McAlpin had to offer concerning the Calabasas fight. "And I was sorry to see Gale mixed up in it," he concluded, in his effort to draw Nan out, "sorry. And sorrier to think of Henry de Spain getting killed that way. Why, I knowed Henry de Spain when he was a baby in arms." He put out his hand cannily.
McAlpin had hurried over to the barn to get Kitchen and telephone Tenison to come down. "There's two ways they can get out," said Laramie, casting up the situation with his companions. "One is across the Falling Wall and over the Reservation. If they've gone that way they've got a start; but they're easy to trail. The other way would be to strike east or west for the railroad.
But Simmie and John Fryin' Pan scouted along behind and Simmie rode in ahead near town to tell me Laramie was comin'. God! He was a sight when he rode into this barn. He tumbled off his horse right there" McAlpin pointed to a spot where fresh straw had been sprinkled "just like a dead man. I helped carry him upstairs," he whispered. "I'll take y' to him.
McAlpin, with clearing wits, nodded more than once. "No fault of mine; it just happened so. And she may not at first take kindly to the idea of going with me." "I see." "But she ought to do it. She will be tired it's a long, dusty ride for a well woman, let alone one that has been ill." "So it is, so it is!" De Spain looked now shamelessly at his ready-witted aid.
Jerry-Jo, the son of the older McAlpin, was four years older than Priscilla and was the only really young creature who had ever entered her life intimately. The other family, of whom the girl thought vaguely, as she might have of a story, were the Travers of the Far Hill Place.
Bull, with the last flickering spark of vitality still left within him, looked steadily up and winked at de Spain. McAlpin, outraged, stamped out of the room. Steadying the dipper in both hands, Bull with an effort passed one hand at the final moment preliminarily over his mouth, and, raising the bowl, emptied it. The poison electrified him into utterance.
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