"Is that the truth? He'd care for me like that? Oh, Pete!"
"Care? He'd worship you. Them Prouty folks would bite themselves if they could see your Old Man," he chuckled faintly.
"He is still living, then? Oh, Pete!" She extended two pleading hands impulsively, "Don't make me wait!"
Something other than fever glittered in his eyes, and there was more than satisfaction in his voice when he said: "That's somethin' like it--somethin'--not quite! It's sweeter nor music to hear you beg. But, damn you, you ain't humble enough yet!"
"What do you want me to do?" she cried. "I'll--I'll get down on my knees, if only you'll tell me what I want to know!"
"That's it!" in shrill excitement. "Get down on your knees. I ain't forgot that you called me a 'nigger' once, and hit me with a quirt. It'll kinda wipe it out to see you crawlin' to Pete, that you always treated like dirt. Git down on your knees and beg, if you want me to talk!"
She sank to the floor of the wagon without a word.
He looked at her queerly as she knelt. There was intense gratification in his voice, "You do want to know, when you'll swaller that."
"Yes, Pete," humbly, "I do."
His thin hands lay inert upon the soogan. His head turned weakly while he kept his eyes upon her as though enjoying the situation to the utmost. There was a silence in which he seemed both to be gathering strength and considering how to begin.
"He's the kind of a feller--your Old Man--that don't have to holler his head off to git himself heard. They'd listen in any man's country when he talks. He don't talk much, but what he says goes--the kind that can always finish what he starts.
"He's six feet, and there wasn't any man in the country could handle him in those days. I've seen him throw a three-year-ol' steer like you'd slap over a kid. He was easy and quiet, commonly, like one of them still deep rivers that slip along peaceful till somethin' gits in its way. The patientest feller I ever see with dumb brutes, and a patience that wasn't hardly human, even with folks. But when he did break loose--well, them that thought he was 'harmless' and went too far on account of it never made the same mistake twice."
He continued with evident relish: "That's where he fooled her--Isabelle--she didn't read him right. She thought he was 'soft' because she had her way with him."
"They were married, Pete?"
"Married, right enough--he never thought any other way about her. She was all-the-same angel to him," he grinned. "She never was straight--we all knowed that but him, but she was slick, and she was swingin' her throwrope for him in about a week after they brought her in from the Middle West to teach the school in that district. Anybody that said a word ag'in' her to him would have gone to the hospital. So he went ahead and married her--while she laffed at him to his own hired men.