The next morning after her encounter with Ben Letts, Tess sat up in bed, wondering what had happened. Then she remembered. One slant ray of sun breaking through the dirty curtain showed that the day was far advanced. She jumped out of bed, opened the door and allowed Pete to scamper away.
After kindling a fire and frying a fish, she sat down to eat.
Suddenly a knock on the door startled her. Ben might return even after his lesson of the night before. Without unclasping the lock, she called out: "Who air it?"
"It air me, Tessibel. Open the door.--It air Myry!"
Tess flung open the door with a smile. She drew back, seeing Myra's seamed face, white and drawn.
"Ye be sick, Myry?"
"Nope!"
"Air it the brat, then?"
"Nope, it air Ben Letts. He were hurt by the Brindle Bull at Kennedy's Farm. Ezy and 'Satisfied' found him near dead on the tracks and took him home."
Tess stood waiting, wide-eyed, without a word.
"He wouldn't say nothin' about it," complained Myry; "just says that he air goin' to get even with some one."
"Have ye seen him?" stammered Tess.
"Yep, this mornin' in his shanty. He were cut bad. They got the horse doctor to sew him up. He air sick, Ben air!"
"And the brat," demanded Tess, changing the subject purposely.
"Sick the hours through," replied Myra bitterly. "He hes got the pitifullest cry that breaks my heart all the time. But he ain't so sick as his pappy."
"Ben Letts ain't a-goin' to die, air he?"
Tessibel's woful expression caused Myra to shake her head emphatically, her thin lips twitching, then tightening under the nervous strain.
"Nope, he ain't, but he air goin' to be sick a long time. He air the brat's pa, and I want to do somethin' for him."
"What?"
"He air wantin' to see ye, Tessibel. Will ye go to him?"
"Nope," Tess burst forth spontaneously.
Myra looked at her curiously.
"He ain't amountin' to much," she ventured, "but he air a pappy--that air somethin', ain't it?"
"Yep," mused Tessibel. "A daddy air more than a mammy."
So had Tessibel and Myra been brought up to believe. The squatter women fawned at the feet of their brutal husbands, as a beaten dog cringes to its master. That Ben Letts had broken Myra's arm on the ragged rocks, and yet the girl wanted to aid him, showed Tess the superiority of the male sex, and Myra loved the squint-eyed fisherman, she evidenced it in every action.