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Now, I've settled Buck McKee's hash by putting Slim Hoover wise to that tongue-slittin'. Oh, I'll bring Bud around, all right, all right, even if men that ought to be his friends go back on him." "But, Pollykins " "Don't you girlie me, Jack Payson. I'm a woman, and I'm goin' to be a married one, too, in spite of all you do to Bud. Yes, sirree, bob.
He was not without other anxieties. What if the sight of Tillie's baby did not do all that he expected? Good women could be most cruel. And Schwitter had been very vague. But here K. was more sure of himself: the little man's voice had expressed as exactly as words the sense of a bereavement that was not a grief. He was counting on Mrs. McKee's old fondness for the girl to bring them together.
Buck offered her his hand, but she ignored him. McKee shrugged his shoulders, and started for the house. "Bud, he's some cast down because it's not his weddin'," was McKee's parting shot at the young couple. "I 'low I'll go in and join the boys. Excuse me." "With pleasure," coldly replied the girl. The half-breed ignored the sarcasm and, answering innocently, "Much obliged," he entered the house.
Early in August such a band committed some ravages south of the Kentucky, beating back with loss a few militia who followed it. Some of the Fayette men were about setting forth to try and cut off its retreat, when the sudden and unlooked-for approach of Caldwell and McKee's great war party obliged them to bend all their energies to their own defence. The blow fell on Bryan's Station.
Now I perpose that we all give him a kick, an' let him go; let him have two hours' start, after which the game-laws will be out on him." Sage-brush cried out against the plan, but Echo was moved by McKee's appeal for his comrade, and, speaking low and beseechingly to Sage-brush, said: "It will save a range-war that we can't afford to have till Jack and Slim get back." Sage-brush finally assented.
No doubt we all breathed freer when Pilgrim, too, was beached, although it be only confessed in the privacy of the log. With her and her cargo safely stored in the wharf-boat, we sought a hotel, and, regaining our bag of clothing, shipped ahead of us from McKee's Rocks, donned urban attire for an inspection of the city.
But first of all he drove back to the Street, and walked without ringing into Mrs. McKee's. Neither a year's time nor Mrs. McKee's approaching change of state had altered the "mealing" house. The ticket-punch still lay on the hat-rack in the hall. Through the rusty screen of the back parlor window one viewed the spiraea, still in need of spraying. Mrs.
McKee's, and the house in the country; her loneliness, and the loneliness of the man; even the faint stirrings of potential motherhood, her empty arms, her advancing age all this she knit into the fabric of her story and laid at Harriet's feet, as the ancients put their questions to their gods. Harriet was deeply moved. Too much that Tillie poured out to her found an echo in her own breast.
McKee recognized the Sheriff. "Hullo! when did you git back?" he asked. "Jes' now. Is this your money?" said Slim, holding the roll in front of McKee's eyes. "No; it's your'n. Part o' what I took from 'Ole Man' Terrill. The idee o' not recognizin' your own property!" McKee grinned at his joke on the Sheriff. "I held the old man up, and that's all there is to it." "Who was with you?" asked Slim.
The outlaw crept up out of the draw behind the contemplative half-breed, and, leaping upon his back, plunged his knife in McKee's neck, with a fierce thrust, into which he concentrated all his hatred for the humiliation he had endured. With a stifled cry Buck struggled to his feet to face his assailant, drawing his gun instinctively. The knife had bitten too deeply, however.
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