“Ah,” cried John Gaspar, “you’re not as hard as you seem.  One of these days I’ll prove it.  Besides, you won’t forget me.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

Jig rose from his chair and stood leaning against it, his hands dropped lightly into the pockets of his dressing gown.  He looked extraordinarily boyish at that moment, and he seemed to have the fearlessness of a child which knows that the world has no real account against it.  Riley Sinclair set his teeth to keep back a flood of pity that rose in him.

“You wait and see,” said Jig.  He raised a finger at Sinclair.  “I’ll keep coming back into your mind a long time after you leave me; and you’ll keep coming back into my mind.  Oh, I know it!”

“How in thunder do you?”

“I don’t know.  Just because—­well, how did I understand at the trial that you knew I was innocent, and that you would let no harm come to me?”

“Did you know that?” asked Sinclair.

Instead of answering, Jig broke into his soft, pleasant laughter.

11

“Laugh and be hanged,” declared Sinclair.  “I’m going outside.  And don’t try no funny breaks while I’m gone,” he said.  “I’ll be watching and waiting when you ain’t expecting.”  With that he was gone.

At the door of the house a gust of hot wind struck him, for the day was verging on noon, and there seemed more heat than light in the sun.  Even to that hot gust Sinclair jerked his bandanna knot aside and opened his throat gratefully.  He felt as if he had been under a hard nervous strain for some time past.  Cold Feet, the craven, the weak of hand and the frail of spirit, had tested him in a new way.  He had been confronting a novel and unaccountable thing.  He felt very oddly as if someone had been prodding into corners of his nature yet unknown even to himself.  He tingled from the rapier touches of that last laughter.

Now his eyes roamed with relief across the valley.  Heat waves blurred the hollow and pushed Sour Creek away until it seemed a river of mist—­yellow mist.  He raised his attention out of that sweltering hollow to the cool, blue, mighty mountains—­his country!

Presently he had forgotten all this.  He settled his hat on the back of his head and began to kick a stone before him, following it aimlessly.

Someone was humming close to him, and he turned sharply to see Sally Bent go by, carrying a bucket.  She smiled generously, and though he knew that she doubtless hated him in her heart and smiled for a purpose, he had to reply with a perfunctory grin.  He stalked after her to the little leaping creek and dipped out a full bucket.

“Thanks,” said Sally, wantonly meeting his eye.

As well try to soften a sphinx.  Sinclair carried the dripping bucket on the side nearest the girl and thereby gained valuable distance.  “I’m mighty glad it’s you and not one of the rest,” confided Sally, still smiling firmly up to him.