Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/219

205 Once more he winced.

Then, slowly: “I'm tryin' to be square. Tryin' hard. I know you got a claim in her. But it seems like I have, too. She's like a part of me, mostly. When she's happy, I feel like smilin' sort of. When she cries it hurts me so's I can't hardly stand it.”

He paused, looking wistfully from the staring child to Kate.

He said with sudden illumination: “Let her do the judgin'! You ask her to go to you, and I'll ask her to come to me. Ain't that square?”

For a moment Kate hesitated, but as she looked at Joan it seemed to her that when she stretched out her arms to her baby nothing in the world could keep them apart.

“It's fair,” she answered. Dan dropped to one knee.

“Joan, you got to make up your mind. If you want to stay with, with Satan—speak up, Satan!”

The stallion whinnied softly, and Joan smiled.

“With Satan and Black Bart”—the wolf-dog had glided near, and now stood watching—“and with Daddy Dan, you just come to me. But if you want to go to—to Munner, you just go.” On his face the struggle showed—the struggle to be perfectly just. “If you stay here, maybe it'll be cold, sometimes when the wind blows, and maybe it'll be hard other ways. And if you go to munner, she always be takin' care of you, and no harm'll ever come to you and you'll sleep soft between