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The response to the appeal came in a hard voice: "You needn't expect me to take up your fights. You finish what you start." Kate gave her mother a despairing look and ran towards the pack ponies, with Mullendore now close at her heels. Spurred by fear, she dodged in and out, doubling and redoubling, endeavoring to keep a pony between herself and her pursuer.
"Say it out loud, Mullendore the name of the town you'd put on the postal if you were going to write to the 'Old Man." His lips moved to speak, and then somewhat as if the habit of secrecy asserted itself even in his delirium, he checked himself with an expression of obstinacy on his face. Kate's hand crept to his shoulder and clutched it tight. "Tell me, Pete!" She shook him hard.
Then his tongue clicked as it dropped to the back of his mouth, and Mullendore was dead. Few in Prouty denied that there were forty-eight hours in the day that began about six o'clock on Saturday night and lasted until the same hour Monday morning.
Haven't you any honor not a speck?" "I git what I want any way I can git it. That's me Mullendore." "Tell me what you want! Is it money, Pete?" "Money! Hell! What's money good for to me? Money's only to blow after you've got enough to eat. What do you spose I want? I want you!" "What do you mean?" "Just that." An oath came between his clenched teeth. "I'm stuck on you!
He laughed in malicious enjoyment as he saw the color rise to the roots of her hair; and when she would have passed, reached out and grasped her arm. "Let me be, Pete Mullendore!" She tried to pull loose. "When you've give me a kiss." There was a flame in the muddy eyes. With a twist she freed herself and cried with fury vibrating in her voice, "I hate you I hate you!
As soon as they were through the gate the pack ponies stopped and stood with spreading legs and drooping heads while Mullendore sauntered over to Kate and laid a hand familiarly on her shoulder. "Ain't you got a howdy for me, kid?" She moved aside and began stripping the harness from the horse for the quite evident purpose of avoiding his touch.
The tension was telling on Kate and a kind of nervous frenzy grew upon her as the time dragged by and she was no nearer learning what she had hoped to learn than when she had had Mullendore brought to her camp.
She had just come down from Burnt Basin and was not in too good a humor. Bowers, who was staying with Mullendore, came out of the wagon when he heard her and asked: "How was it lookin'?" "The spring was trampled to a bog," she said in an exasperated voice, "and the range is covered with bare spots where that dry-farmer has salted his cattle.
"Where did you git it, Mullendore?" His answer was a breath. "Toomey." "One thing more Where does Kate Prentice's father live? His address quick!" Teeters shook the wasted shoulders in his haste. The muddy blue-gray iris was divided in half by the closing upper lids. Beneath the glaze there seemed a last malicious spark.
She made a gesture of despair, but repeated persistently: "She told you that you ought to be ashamed to pack a horse like that. Three hundred pounds, Pete Mullendore! You haven't any feeling for a horse." "Killed Old Blue and left him on the trail. My, but you're gittin' growed up fast. Ain't you got a kiss for Pete?" She leaned closer.
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