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Updated: June 22, 2025
His eyes and mind were fixed on a deed which would stain the virgin wild with the ancient crime that sent the first marauder on human life into the wilderness. As Buckmaster's figure darkened the doorway Sinnet seemed to waken as from a dream, and he got swiftly to his feet. "Wait you wait, Buck. You've got to hear all. You haven't heard my story yet. Wait, I tell you."
Sinnet asked presently, after drinking a very small portion of liquor, and tossing some water from the pannikin after it. "You're sure Greevy killed your boy, Buck?" "My name's Buckmaster, ain't it Jim Buckmaster? Don't I know my own name? It's as sure as that. My boy said it was Greevy when he was dying. He told Bill Ricketts so, and Bill told me afore he went East.
It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Listen," he said. "You bin a long time out West. You bin in the mountains a good while. Listen." There was silence. Sinnet listened intently. He heard the faint drip, drip, drip of water, and looked steadily at the back wall of the room. "There rock?" he said, and jerked his head toward the sound.
The old man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet was startled, in so far as anything could startle anyone who had lived a life of chance and danger and accident, and his face grew a shade paler; but he did not move, and Buckmaster's hand tightened convulsively. "You liked him, an' he liked you; he first learnt poker off you, Sinnet.
Indeed, the little but was so constructed that it could not be distinguished from the woods even a short distance away. "Can't have a fire, I suppose?" Sinnet asked. "Not daytimes. Smoke 'd give me away if he suspicioned me," answered the mountaineer. "I don't take no chances. Never can tell."
There alone, of course, lay his only possible chance of recovery. He would go to-morrow. Perhaps Sheila had not yet discovered his absence; and there would be no difficulty in repeating so successful a stratagem. Remembrance of his miserable mistake, of Miss Sinnet, faintly returned to him as he swiftly mounted the steps to his porch. Poor old lady.
When he came back, I got him to give me a hand to roll up the mat, which was a very large one. "I'll finish stopping it," I said. "You go and put your sinnet away." "Wait a minute," he replied, and gathered up a double handful of shakins from the deck, under where I had been working. Then he ran to the side. "Here!" I said. "Don't go dumping those.
So I put a cinch on myself, an' got to sleepin' again from the full dusk to dawn, for Greevy wouldn't take the trail at night. I've kept stiddy." He held out his hand as though to show that it was firm and steady, but it trembled with the emotion which had conquered him. He saw it, and shook his head angrily. "It was seein' you, Sinnet. It burst me.
He raised his single-barrelled rifle, as though he would shoot Sinnet; but, at the moment, he remembered that a shot would warn Greevy, and that he might not have time to reload. He laid his rifle against a tree swiftly. "Git away from here," he said, with a strange rattle in his throat. "Git away quick; he'll be down past here in a minute."
He thought you was a tough, but he didn't mind that no more than I did. It ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always. Things in life git stronger than we are. You was a tough, but who's goin' to judge you! I ain't; for Clint took to you, Sinnet, an' he never went wrong in his thinkin'. God! he was wife an' child to me an' he's dead dead dead."
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