Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/218

204 He had stepped to Joan while she spoke, and his hands made a quick movement of cherishing about her golden head, without touching it. For the first and the last time in her life, she saw something akin to fear in his eyes.

“Kate, I can't come back. I got things to do—out here!”

“Then let me take her.”

She watched the wavering in him.

“Things would be kind of empty if she was gone, Kate.”

“Why?” she asked bitterly. “You say you have your work to do—out here?”

He considered this gravely.

“I dunno. Except that I sort of need her.”

She knew from of old that such questions only puzzled him, and soon he would cast away the attempt to decide, and act. Action was his sphere. There was only one matter in which he was unfailingly, relentlessly the same, and that was justice. To that sense in him she would make her last appeal.

“Dan, I can't take her. I only ask you to see that I'm right. She belongs to me, I bought her with pain.”

It was a staggering blow to Whistling Dan. He took off his sombrero and passed his hand slowly across his forehead, then looked at her with a dumb appeal.

“I only want you to do the thing you think is square, Dan.”