It was a knock at his door that turned him about at
last, and in answer to his invitation Stampede came
in. He nodded and sat down. Shiftingly his
eyes traveled about the room.
“Been a fine night, Alan. Everybody glad
to see you.”
“They seemed to be. I’m happy to
be home again.”
“Mary Standish did a lot. She fixed up
this room.”
“I guessed as much,” replied Alan.
“Of course Keok and Nawadlook helped her.”
“Not very much. She did it. Made the
curtains. Put them pictures and flags there.
Picked the flowers. Been nice an’ thoughtful,
hasn’t she?”
“And somewhat unusual,” added Alan.
“And she is pretty.”
“Most decidedly so.”
There was a puzzling look in Stampede’s eyes.
He twisted nervously in his chair and waited for words.
Alan sat down opposite him.
“What’s on your mind, Stampede?”
“Hell, mostly,” shot back Stampede with
sudden desperation. “I’ve come loaded
down with a dirty job, and I’ve kept it back
this long because I didn’t want to spoil your
fun tonight. I guess a man ought to keep to himself
what he knows about a woman, but I’m thinking
this is a little different. I hate to do it.
I’d rather take the chance of a snake-bite.
But you’d shoot me if you knew I was keeping
it to myself.”
“Keeping what to yourself?”
“The truth, Alan. It’s up to me to
tell you what I know about this young woman who calls
herself Mary Standish.”
The physical sign of strain in Stampede’s face,
and the stolid effort he was making to say something
which it was difficult for him to put into words,
did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion’s
promised disclosure. Instead of suspense he felt
rather a sense of anticipation and relief. What
he had passed through recently had burned out of him
a certain demand upon human ethics which had been
almost callous in its insistence, and while he believed
that something very real and very stern in the way
of necessity had driven Mary Standish north, he was
now anxious to be given the privilege of gripping
with any force of circumstance that had turned against
her. He wanted to know the truth, yet he had
dreaded the moment when the girl herself must tell
it to him, and the fact that Stampede had in some
way discovered this truth, and was about to make disclosure
of it, was a tremendous lightening of the situation.
“Go on,” he said at last. “What
do you know about Mary Standish?”
Stampede leaned over the table, a gleam of distress
in his eyes. “It’s rotten. I
know it. A man who backslides on a woman the way
I’m goin’ to oughta be shot, and if it
was anything else—anything—I’d
keep it to myself. But you’ve got to know.
And you can’t understand just how rotten it
is, either; you haven’t ridden in a coach with
her during a storm that was blowing the Pacific outa
bed, an’ you haven’t hit the trail with
her all the way from Chitina to the Range as I did.
If you’d done that, Alan, you’d feel like
killing a man who said anything against her.”
