Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/282

 " My mother wouldn't let me go with you! "

A shadowy cunning crossed his face.

" You'll go, when I say so. I got the whip-hand o' Jezebel."

" You're bragging, Pete MuUendore. My mother's not afraid of you."

" Jest a line on a postal — ud bring the Old Man on a special. You're more afraid of the Old Man than you are of dyin' — ain't it the truth, Isabelle? " he mumbled.

" You're only talking to hear yourself — you wouldn't know where to write. You've forgotten the name of the town where the ' Old Man ' lives. You can't remember at all, can you, Pete? "

A frown lined his forehead while she waited with parted lips, afraid to move lest she start him rambling elsewhere again.

" You couldn't say the name of the town where Katie Prentice's father lives! "

Bending over him, rigid, tense, it seemed as though she would draw the answer from him through sheer will power.

He rolled his head fretfully to and fro, looking into her eyes with dilated pupils that burned in yellow blood- shot eyeballs. The wind rattled loose wagon bolts and scattered the ashes on the hearth in a puff, while Kate with a thumping heart waited for a response.

" Think! " she urged. " 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 himselif with an expression of obstinacy on his face.

Kate's hand crept to his shoulder and clutched It right.