The Red Book Magazine/Volume 17/Number 5/A Man Who Could Do Things

ORKE, Captain of the Honolulu Mounted Police and nothing of anything anywhere else, so far as men knew, was in a bad temper. From dawn until this five of the clock on a windy evening, he had been in the saddle along the dusty, little-trod trails that give out from the main roads tapping the mountain wildernesses, and all his tact and reputation, all his wise knowledge of native language and honor and beliefs had not given him the information that he was looking for. He would get it, of course, as he always did, just through his sheer inability to know when he was beaten, but time was short, and for the present there seemed no open way to him.

Then he topped the hill that led down by steep zig-zag grades to the town, took in all that the view presented to him with a quick, practiced glance, and swore, curtly and efficiently, as he did most things. There was a girl in the middle of the broad road that was swamped yellow with sunset. She wore a white riding-habit, and with some inadequate weapon, presumably a hairpin, she was trying to dig a stone out of her mare's off hind-foot.

Yorke's lips set together sharply. He had never seen the girl before; but he knew the mare for one of Southwark's best. and knew that there were no stones above the strip of new shingling just put in a half-mile lower down.

“Must have had it in these ten minutes, poor brute. And the girl'd never notice, of course. Well, that kind o' thing does make me feel sick. Serve Southwark right if she's lamed for good. Now—I suppose—”

He kicked his colt into a sharp trot, came up in a cloud of dust, and dropped off against the mare's quarter.

“Best let me have a go at that,” he said, and took the foot into his hands straightway.

The girl stood up in swift anger, and the hot blood flushed her face. But Yorke did not see. He was feeling for his pocket farrier-case, jerking out the instrument he wanted, and getting a purchase for the coming struggle with the hock well-braced against the inside of his forearm. A three-cornered lump of road-metal was jammed between the frog and the caulk of the shoe, and the mare winced as Yorke bore on it.

“Steady, pet,” he said, soothingly. “Whoa-a, then, Donna. Poor old girl, you have had a doing.”

Tenderly, dexterously, he pried out the metal but the effort brought sweat to hands and face, and the girl saw the strong muscles spring up along the back of his stooped neck.

“There, honey,” he said, and let the foot down gently. But the mare flinched from her weight on it, and stood, shivering.

Yorke packed away his case in silence. He dared not speak. Like most men whose work lies among horses he loved them, and in sight of what he termed “a piece of condemned brutality” he sorrowed that the culprit was not a man.

The girl's wrath had grown with the minutes. Now she spoke:

“If I am not interrupting your monologue perhaps you will permit me to ask a question. Can I ride home on her?”

Yorke's temper suddenly overleapt its control.

“I wouldn't,” he said. “Perhaps you might.”

The tone stung more than the words. The girl faced him, thrusting back her broad hat, and the flame of her fury met Yorke's cold anger.

“You are the rudest man!” she cried. “The rudest and the horridest man I ever saw! How dare you speak to me like that! How dare you! How dare you!”

For the first time Yorke looked at her squarely. He had seen a hundred prettier girls in his time, and he had never before seen one who screamed at him, and stamped her foot, when, by all the laws of the game and womanhood, she should have been dissolved in humble tears. This was the reason—he discovered it when he figured the matter out later—why he knew, in one lightning-flash of conviction, that the little angry-eyed vixen in the road-center was just the one girl in the world for him.

He laughed, suddenly forgetful of the suffering mare.

“Don't get mad,” he said. “Please don't. I've acted like a dog, of course, but—but I didn't know it was you, you know.”

The girl eyed him distrustfully.

“You don't know it's me,” she said. “Who am I, then?”

Yorke laughed again.

“I don't know your name. That doesn't matter—yet. But I mean—I could go and chase myself because I was so rude to you. I—I'm very fond of horses, you see. That's no excuse, of course. But I—I—do beg your pardon.”

“I didn't know the stone was there at first. Truly I didn't.”

“Of course you didn't,” said Yorke. “How should you? I might not—” He balked at the lie and changed it. “Would you like to get up on my colt? He's an ill-conditioned beast, but he's had a good bit of the devil taken out of him to-day. I'll lead Donna home.”

“When you've done heaping coals of fire on my head I'll shovel some ashes on, myself. I am very sorry. I really truly am, and you did quite right to be angry. Now I am going to lead Donna home.”

“Please,” said Yorke, and took both bridles, and walked with her down the steep twilight ways where the scent of the prickly mimosa passed them on the wind's breath and the cacti and dead trees began to take on repulsive and ghostly shapes among the naked rocks. The green and gold that quivered in all the gleams of a beetle's wing had gone from the sky, and the pale, soft, duskiness which pretends to be night in Hawaii had swum down over harbor and rugged mountain and swaying palms, when the girl thrust open the door of the Southwarks' dining-room and blinked at the sudden flare of light.

“I'm too hungry to get tidy,” she said. “But I did wash my hands. Dear Mrs. Southwark, may I come in as I am?”

“Surely, dear. There's room beside Bobby. Pull up a chair for Betty, son.”

Bobby obeyed cheerfully.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. “You look as if you'd been haying a ripping time.”

“I haven't,” said Betty, untruthfully. “Donna got a stone in her foot and I couldn't get it out, and a man came along and did it, and he was so rude.”

“Gee whiz! What kind of a man?”

“He had one of those awful yellow uniforms like mustard plasters, and a Mexican saddle that nobody with two legs could fall out of, and he hadn't shaved for a week.”

“Mounted Police. But they're civil, generally. I suppose you cheeked him. What's his name?”

“Forget. Talk, or Baulk or Stalk. He did all three, anyway.”

“Yorke!” Bobby exploded with sudden laughter. “Gee, Betty, have you been putting on the gloves with him? D'you know what they say of Yorke down at Barracks?”

“No,” said Betty, reaching for the bread.

“They call him 'the man who can do things in spite of hell!'”

“Bobby!”

Under cover of reproof and apologies Betty leaned back in her chair, her eyes shining with unholy light.

“I like that,” she murmured. “So he would. So he certainly would.”

In his own room at the Barracks Yorke was staring in the glass by the aid of a candle that dropped grease all down his wrist.

“I look bad enough to make a cat put up its tail and spit,” he said. “And she saw me. Well—I don't know if she noticed me much, but she's going to notice me before I've done with her. And her dear little name's Betty. Ah! it's Betty for mine, and it wont be long till I tell her so.”

It was exactly a week. But, through stress of business, Yorke had only seen her four times in that week. On the afternoon of the eighth day he had been surf-riding on Waikiki beach and from the pier Betty had cheered him with glowing eyes and the very spirit of delight in her voice. He went back to the bathing-rooms and changed swiftly, and came to her among the palms and the gaudy poinsettias rimming the sea. The slap of the salt water had tingled his blood; the glory of the long ride in on the slippery board that crested the mighty combers had filled him to the brim with pride and daring. His step showed it; his eyes showed it—and at any time did Yorke's eyes betray uncertainty?—and he knew at that moment that, not in all the world, was there a force that he could not grip by the neck and hammer into subjection if he so willed it. And thus it was that with his head up, and his skin glowing, and love quick in his every fiber, he went to his undoing. For at the sixth word Betty cried out.

“Oh, stop,” she cried. “You mustn't. Oh—you don't know what you're saying.”

“I don't, eh?” Yorke laughed. “Well, I guess I do, Betty. I—”

“Oh! Oh! Couldn't you see my ring? I wore it all the time. Didn't you know I was engaged? You must have! You couldn't have helped knowing.”

Then, before the sudden white shock of Yorke's face, she broke down into tears. “I thought you knew. Oh, how dreadful—how wicked of me. But I thought you knew.”

Not for nothing had Yorke lived on the edge of life where promptness and self-control swing the balance between those that live and those that die.

He stooped over her, drawing back her tumbling hair with tender, clumsy, fingers.

“It's all right, Betty. It's all right, dear. Just tell me one thing, little girl—quick. You—you love the other fellow, do you?”

“W-with every bit of me,” sobbed Betty.

“Ah! Then that's all, dear. Thank you. Please don't cry. That hurts me worst. And you've nothing to cry for. You didn't know that I—that I—”

“He—he's away,” Betty jerked out her words in sections. “But he's coming back soon. We've only been—been engaged a little while. You must know him, I guess—”

But Yorke had reached the limit of his control.

“Don't tell me his name, please,” he said. “I'd rather not hear it just yet. Here's Bobby come to look for you. Good-night, Miss Betty. See you again some time.”

He nodded to Bobby, and went away with his head up. But it was midnight before he found himself in his room, considering the matter with some degree of sanity and decision.

“I've only known her a week, and a fellow might reckon he could forget one week. But then it is all the love of my life. I've never wanted to give it to any girl before, and when she came along she just had to have the lot of it right away. I guess she's got it for keeps, too. And if the other fellow finds out he'll have to lump it, for the thing's gone past me. And if he's a friend o' mine I don't want to know it yet. Getting the brake on again is going to keep me busy for a while.”

Through dogged pluck and strenuous work Yorke “got the brake on” his life, and curbed and bitted his thoughts back into harness. The hot weather came, with its usual tale of petty sicknesses and sins, and he flung himself gallantly into the eternal daily round of office-work, of parades, of canteen or kit-inspections, and of all the million million other things that make the life of a Mounted Policeman fill up to the brim and spill over.

He had never cared for society; now he left it alone, driving through his labors steadily, thinking of Betty with an honest steadfastness that needed no self-shame, and altering not a whit to his comrades of the mess and the billiard-room. He did not surf-ride any more, for memory of that vital hour of delight so suddenly flung in the dust was too keen. But he rode his mad young colt on a light snaffle only, and derived more joy from his flights with it than anything else the present time offered. Then, sudden and solid as a dropped thunder bolt, came the word which called all his brain and body muscles up into tautness and demanded of him the last inch he could give.

The news came down from the hills through a hundred mouths and would have filled several Sunday “special editions.” But, stripped of all verbiage and entered up concisely in the Police minutes it went into the following:

When Harrison and A. Company returned through the sunset it seemed that some excitement was rather more than probable. On the rim of the first plantation they had to choose between attack or retreat; and, the former being expressly forbidden, they retreated in wrath and discontent and carried their complaint to the Temporary Colonel Commanding. Lukin, the grim old martinet who had grown gray in command of his men, was in San Francisco, and the T. C. C. was rather less efficient than an ordinary back-yard cat when it came to fighting tactics. He sent for Yorke, because Yorke's reputation was a thing the barrack-room betted on, and he explained the whole matter laboriously. Yorke knew it already, but he kept silence until the T. C. C. said:

“You see, in any case we mustn't come to scrapping. We are only 1,300 men all told against near 8,000.'

“Half of us could wipe up the floor with that lot,” said Yorke.

“Yes, but we mustn't. It might mean a war with Japan.”

Yorke hid a grin.

“Guess we can do with less fireworks than that,” he said. “Give me an interpreter—it'll have to be Curral, as you say he knows the Jap and the language, though I wouldn't take him for choice—and I'll go up and dig the fellow out with my dog-whip.”

The T. C. C. stared. “You're plumb crazy,” he said finally.

“Seems to me I'm talking horse-sense. It's the proper way to deal with 'em. See now: the Japs are the toughest proposition we've got out here. They're not straight—not the kind we get. If we fought we'd have to put our whole force on to them because they're scattered. And then what would happen down here? What's to prevent a sudden uprising of the hotel and house servants and—and the kind of massacre a man doesn't care to think about? I don't say we'd get it, mind you. But we're rather inviting it. So that game's off. Now, you want the ringleader, don't you? The man who shot Morten?”

“I have already demanded him.”

“But you didn't get him. Well, I guess I can get him. But I don't want any men. To go up there with even a handful of troops would make those beggars think such a damned lot of themselves. I'll go with an interpreter and a dog-whip and I bet you a new panama to a cent that I'll get my man. Oh, you know that right enough, Chesney. Bluff is the biggest winner on earth, and I've got all America to bluff with. Man alive, they'll punt him out quicker than thought.”

The T. C. C.'s face cleared. He was remembering what the barracks said.

“Put—suppose they kill you?” he suggested.

“Suppose nothing! I tell you they couldn't. Gad, I'd like to see 'em try. Do you give me leave to go?”

The T. C. C. rose up, and he laughed.

“Oh, go along and be hanged to you,” he said. “Do as you like. But I don't think you'll get Curral.”

“But I've got to get Curral. That settles it.”

For two hours he sought Curral. Then he found him in the Southwarks' garden, lying in the shade of a lattice of purple Bougainvillia and “Golden Shower” with scents and sleepy silence and blue sky about him, and the big butterflies dipping across the pond near by to salute their delicate sisters, the all-colored water-lilies. Curral was a big, good-looking, lazy man, perfectly groomed, perfectly pleased with himself, and known to a few men, and no women, as a perfect cad. The garden was empty, save for Curral and his cigar, and Yorke dropped on the grass' beside him, and flung the situation into concise words and forcible. Inwardly he was wondering exactly how to meet Curral's certain objections in the quickest possible manner.

For three minutes Curral listened. Then he pulled himself into a sitting position against a fat bottle-palm.

“If you know of any fool who's crazy to go and be cut up by Jap kukris,” he said, “you can tell him from me that I'm not keeping the job down.”

Quick as a flash Yorke chose insult as the speediest weapon.

“I suppose you know that refusal lays you open to a charge of cowardice,” he said.

Curral went brick-red.

“No man ever called me a coward,” he said.

“No? Well, one is calling you that now. Got anything more to say?”

Curral had plenty. He said it heatedly and many times over. But it did not carry conviction. Yorke looked down at his hands. The fingers were twitching.

“I planned to start in half-an-hour,” he said. “That will give you ten minutes in which to think the matter over, Curral. I've got to have you, you know. For the sake of all the women and children on the island I've got to have you, so you may as well look pretty about it.”

Then the sweat came out on Curral's soft, big, face, and his words showed that he was afraid. Yorke stood up and regarded him with interest.

“What does one do with a thing like this?” he asked himself. “Can 1 kick pluck into him? Can I hammer it in? Has he got any kind of a soul that I can make mad enough to sit up? Well—I'll have to wade in and try.”

At times Yorke's tongue had a rasp harsh enough to tear the skin off a man. The application of it now brought Curral to his feet, scarlet and profane; and it was just then, when the flame of anger was fiercest between the two, that Betty sprang out through the low window and ran across the lawn in swift alarm. Yorke had not seen her since that black night on Waikiki beach, and his heart thumped up into his throat and silenced his words.

Betty looked from Curral, red-faced and stuttering, to Yorke, lean and brown, hard-bitten and alert, and her eyebrows kinked up into distressed amaze.

“Oh, what are you quarreling about?” she cried. “What is the matter? Mr. Yorke, what are you doing to Walter?”

She slid her arm into Curral's and he pressed it close, glancing down at her. Yorke stared blankly. Then, quite suddenly, the garish world of blue sky and green, sloping cocoa-palms and gorgeous crotons reeled before him, and the strange sickly-sour smell that is Honolulu's own seemed to press on nostrils and mouth to choke him. He had prayed not to know the man's name. He had prayed not to know it—

“You were angry with Walter,” said Betty. “Why?”

Yorke saw the fear in her eyes, and his love gave him understanding. Betty knew or guessed something of the inner character of the man she loved. Under the prick of that spur he rallied instantly. He had not the wit to invent, but, for her peace, he made prompt inversion of the truth.

“Curral wants to go on a—a rather unpleasant trip to the mountains with me. And I wont have him along. He's got more pluck than is needed to-day.”

He had forgot Curral until he saw the man wince. Then he was glad. Betty laid her cheek on Curral's sleeve and her eyes softened.

“Thank you, Mr. Yorke,” she said. “Of course you'd guess that I—I'd be afraid. But—you are going?”

“Only for a picnic,” said Yorke, and laughed. “This uniform is safer than plate armor, anyway.”

“I hope so,” said Betty, soberly. “And—and Mrs. Southwark was wondering when you were coming to see us again, Mr. Yorke. Good-by; I must go and finish my flowers.”

She went back to the house, and Yorke wheeled on the other man sharply.

“Come on, you cad,” he said. “Time's up. Get busy.”

Curral stuttered in aggrieved amaze.

“Why—why—after what you said—and she said—”

Yorke was white with fury, but his voice was controlled.

“If we don't put the fear of all things into those fellows to-night they'll maybe get enough stuck on themselves by to-morrow to come down and do a little killing before we can stop it. Have you thought what it would mean if—if they started on her!” He gulped over the words, but he said them. “You haven't? Well, I have, and I tell you that if you don't come inside of two minutes you'll wish you had before I'm through with you. Coming?”

Curral came. He never knew why, except that there seemed to be no alternative. But the big burliness of the man had shrunk considerably before the two riders topped the last hill and saw, right and left, the desolate fields, where the half-cut cane spoiled in pale swaths under the burning sun, where the ridged-up rice dried between the drought-stricken trenches, and where, round the beating-tables, the piles of withered stuff blew to and fro with the wind. Back in the banana-groves, where the little brown huts clustered, little brown men clustered also, squatting thick as berries among the scrubby mimosa and the convolvulus and the crotons, and rubbing up the red, raw earth with their idle, flat-soled feet. The world was very still, despite the crowded men. It seemed as though hushed with the great hush of waiting; as though its heart had stopped for a moment that it might pound the fiercer directly. Curral pulled up, speaking almost for the first time.

“You're asking too much of me. You're asking more than any man has the right—”

Yorke leaned over and gripped the hand that twitched on the high cantle. His face was very close, dead-white under the tan, and his breath came hot on the other man's skin.

“I guess we've got to understand each other right now, Curral,” he said. “If you don't do as I tell you I'll kill you. I'll kill you, if I hang for it. We've got to see this game through now, and it's your life and mine and God alone knows how many more if we mess it up. So we are not going to mess it up, my friend Curral, and you can chew on that. Morten messed it up, and you know what he got. Now, come on, and do as you're told.”

“You think yourself mighty brave,” snapped Curral, viciously. “But it is just your day's work. I come as an outsider, and—”

“You think you're the braver? Well, I don't. Because you wouldn't have come at all if you'd had the ghost of a choice. I like to work with a man who gets some fun out of life. What's the Jap for 'Good-day?'”

They made their salutations where the little brown men were lying close as a bee-swarm on a bough, and then, through Curral, Yorke requested conversation with some one in authority. After much delay the Some One in Authority came, staring woodenly from his slant-eyes and carrying defiance in every inch of his five-feet-nothing. Yorke settled back in the saddle with a sigh of content.

“Now we'll get down to work,” he said. “Tell him, Curral, that we have come here for Morten's body and for the man who killed Morten and that we give him just forty minutes in which to produce them both. It is now five minutes to four, and they must be here by four thirty-five. I'm not going to take a dead man down that track in the dark. Get busy, now. And put all the devil you know into it. Lord, if only I could speak the lingo myself!”

Curral delivered his message with fire struck from the flint of desperation, and Yorke saw that it had some slight effect. He had planned each move, but he was trusting to his prestige to rush him through. Not only in cantonments was he known as “the man who could do things.”

The Some One in Authority made sounds which Curral translated—as Yorke expected—into innocent and injured denial of the accusation. Yorke rubbed his chin softly with finger and thumb.

“Tell him that four minutes are gone,” he said.

“What's the damned use o' that? He says—”

“Never you mind what he says. You do as you're told. Go on! You're not an individual just now. You're a phonograph and I want you to get going. Spit it out.”

Curral obeyed. The little brown men looked at each other, shrugging their shoulders. Also, they laughed. Yorke sat immovable. Presently:

“Tell him seven minutes are gone,” he said.

Five times Curral ticked off the minutes. Then he said in English:

“This is absolute rot.”

“You shut up. They're going to get rattled directly. They don't know what I'm at.”

They did not. The thing was too simple for their understanding. Besides, the steady persistence which hammered on them was beginning to wear through the skin to the flesh. Undoubtedly Yorke had not come here just to do what any ordinary clock could do with much less fuss. There must be some deep plot behind it. He was gaining time! Gaining time—for what? Uneasily they began to move and mutter among themselves. Then Some One in Authority spoke.

“We would like to know what you have come for,” he said.

“Tell him he has twelve-and-a-half minutes left,” said Yorke.

Then he dismounted, unhooked a bundle from behind the saddle, and spread the Stars and Stripes out on the ground. He was playing for effect; and sight of the flag that ruled them, of the plain, business-like uniform, and of the significant bulge inside the tunic just where it met the left armpit disturbed the little brown men quite as much as he knew it would.

For all his quiet, unconcerned movements they were assured that Yorke could work that deadly revolver lying across his breast quicker than light. And, because he turned his back on them, stooping over the flag until a downward jab with a knife at the neck-nape would be the easiest thing in the world, they argued that this level-eyed, stern-faced man was inviting death because he knew of the tremendous retribution which would follow. Therefore, they held off, looking at each other.

“Tell 'em,” said Yorke, patting the corners straight as he stooped, “that the C. O. has been in communication with Washington all morning and that I'm acting under the direct command of our President—”

Behind him Curral was exploding.

“Yorke, you're biting off more than you can chew—”

Yorke's tone and manner did not alter. He moved over to the next corner.

“Are you running this three-card monté game or am I? Remember that they understand sound if not sense. I wish your parents had licked a little wisdom into you, Curral.” Here he straightened up, standing with folded arms on the center of the flag. “Tell 'em that the President of the United States of America has given me forty minutes in which to receive Haishi Toko and Morten's body on the American flag—and they'd best look sharp for there are only three left. Oh, you beggars,” said Yorke, suddenly thrusting his face forward. “I've got you cold.”

His attitude carried his meaning. On the tick of the third minute Haishi Toko was there and Morten was being hastily disinterred from a shallow grave. As Yorke clicked on the handcuffs somebody fired out of the mass. Curral cried out, but it was on Yorke's right shoulder that the red stain sprang up instantly. The crowd surged, half in fear, half in lust. Yorke spoke quickly.

“Steady, Curral. We've got them. Speak up. Tell 'em I want that man now.”

It was the unflinching eyes, the unmoving body, the utter absence of fear that did it. Curral never knew it was done. But as they rode down the mountain flank with six small, civil, men bearing before them the body of Morten w rapped in the flag and Haishi Toko and a second man running handcuffed at Yorke's side, put his puzzlement into words, and Yorke answered him.

“Bluff will generally carry you through if you bluff high enough. If a man must lie let him lie well. There's no sense in half-measures.”

Curral had strapped his shoulder clumsily, but he was giddy and sick from loss of blood and from the breaking of the tension before he had delivered his men up, reported himself, and been properly probed and bandaged. Then he went out, seeking the cool night air and the silence, in order that, with no man to watch him, he could meet and overcome the knowledge that Curral the cad, Curral the cur and the coward, was to have control of Betty's life.

And then, just on the edge of the hill with its wind-blown salt from the sea, he met Betty, herself. She pulled her horse back on its haunches with a jerk that spattered dust up in Yorke's face.

“You—you liar!” she cried. “How dared you tell me you were persuading Walter not to go with you when you knew—you knew that you were taking him up to that dreadful place just to protect you. You were afraid to go along and so you took him! Oh, you coward!”

“Curral's got his goods in pretty quick,” said Yorke's brain, but he did not speak or move. His silence infuriated Betty. Possibly some part of her was listening for the contradiction.

“Speak, will you!” she cried. “You risked his life when—when you knew that I cared for him. You did it on purpose! Did you think I'd ever have looked at you if he'd been killed there? Did you? Answer me!”

Yorke could have said many things, but he was too weary, too sick with pain and reaction and his private grief.

“I—don't know,” he said, vaguely.

“You don't know! You can't even speak truth now, then? Oh, I'd have forgiven anything if you hadn't lied to me. You! Don't come near me! Take that, then!”

Yorke's outstretched arm missed the parry, and the whip cut across his face. Then Betty tore down the road into the dark, and the sound of her sobbing faded out with the roar of the hoofs.

Slowly, dazed, Yorke felt along the rising weal with his fingers.

“Poor little girl,” he said. ”Poor little girl.” And then, as an after thought, he added ”Damn Curral!

Five days later his orderly brought him a letter as he was dressing. He opened it carelessly, awkwardly, with his left hand; read it through; read it again, and sat on the edge of his cot, drawing a deep breath. It was a tear-stained and illegible scrap, without beginning or end, and it said:

“Bobby heard all you and Walter said that day because he was up in the guava-tree and it wasn't wicked of him to listen. I'm glad he did listen. He told me that night, after I'd hit you and didn't know you were hurt. I don't know how to say I'm sorry. I'm the wickedest girl in the world, I think, and I know I'm the unhappiest. But I've told Mr. Curral what I think of him, anyway. You'll never, never forgive me, I know, but if you do I'll be at home this afternoon.” (These words were so erased that Yorke read them with difficulty). “Colonel Chesney came to dinner the other night and he told us what you had done, and I've been trying to write to you ever since. And if I don't send this right away I'll tear it up.”

Yorke looked on the smudgy, tear-wrinkled bit of paper until the keen eyes that sinners dreaded grew misty

“If I ever forgive you,” he said, softly. “Betty, Betty, you little girl!”

Then he laughed, standing up.

“And she told Curral what she thought of him, did she? Gad, that makes up for a good deal.”