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Updated: June 25, 2025
When McAlpin had given him all minor information called for, de Spain walked with him out into the barn to inspect the horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry, sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some company hay, was Nan Morgan's.
That Scotch hybrid McAlpin knows a few things, too, that he won't tell. All I want to say is, you can trust that man too far. He's got all my recent salary. Every time Jeffries raises my pay that hairy-pawed horse-doctor reduces it just so much a month. And he does it with one pack of fifty-two small cards that you could stick into your vest pocket."
"Let's see if there is any oil in the lamp!" Jerry-Jo exclaimed. He was in no mood for darkness himself. "They must have filled it before they went," Priscilla answered. "See, there is some oil on the table." McAlpin struck a match and soon the room was flooded with a new brightness that reached even to the far corners and seemed to set free the real loneliness that held these two together.
Well, then, some day you will find me gone, Jerry-Jo. Gone to make my life. Will you miss me?" This question caused McAlpin to stop paddling. "You won't be let!" he murmured; "you a girl!" "I, a girl!" Priscilla laughed scornfully. "You will see. This day, after I have thanked him up yonder, I am going to ask his mother to help me get away. Surely a lady such as she could help me.
With nothing more than a greeting, he opened his mind: "I want a talk with you, Jim," he said bluntly. "Where's Kate?" Not even the freedom of the bar fully established could hold McAlpin after he had seen Laramie and Doubleday walk out of the lumber yard and start down Main Street together. McAlpin had the reputation of having missed no important shooting in Sleepy Cat for years.
There were no windows, but through a gable door, partly ajar, shot a narrow slit of daylight from the afterglow of the sunset. Kate caught glimpses of a maze of rafters, struts and beams and under them huge piles of loose hay. Reaching the top step she paused, trying to look about in the dim light, when Laramie, close at hand, startled her: "McAlpin told me you wanted to see me," he said.
"I mean he's lying near here bleeding to death this minute and Doctor Carpy in Medicine Bend." In tones broken with anger and excitement, Belle told the disconnected story as it had come to her in jerks and nods and oaths from McAlpin at the barn, and in the little she had pulled out of Laramie himself when she took food to him. Then came in terribly heated words the brunt of her anger at Kate.
As she hesitated some one stepped from the shadow of a clump of bushes and confronted her under the electric light. "Can you tell me how to find the nearest way out? I'm lost." Priscilla's heart gave one hard throb and stood still, it seemed for an hour, while an almost forgotten terror seized and held her. She was looking full upon Jerry-Jo McAlpin!
"If you don't want to take a rig and driver," announced McAlpin, after all had been canvassed, "there's the stage for the fort; they had to wait for the mail. Bill Bradley is on tonight. I'm thinkin' he'll set y' over from the ford it's only a matter o' two or three miles." "Are there any other passengers?" asked Kate doubtfully.
"McAlpin," he said contemptuously, "walk around behind Laramie and lift Stone's gun." Stone started violently. "Look out, Tenison! I lift my gun when there's men to stand by and see fair play!" A roar of laughter went up. "I don't lift it for no frame-up," he shouted, turning angrily toward the unsympathetic crowd. "Get out!" cried one voice far enough back to be safe.
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