The house where I had killed one of her kin would ever be
haunted for her. She had said she was a Southerner and that blood was
thick. When I had thought out the matter a little further, I
deliberately sat up in bed, scaring the wits out of all my kind nurses.
"Steele, I'll never get well in this house. I want to go home. When can
you take me?"
They remonstrated with me and pleaded and scolded, all to little avail.
Then they were persuaded to take me seriously, to plan, providing I
improved, to start in a few days. We were to ride out of Pecos County
together, back along the stage trail to civilization. The look in
Sally's eyes decided my measure of improvement. I could have started
that very day and have borne up under any pain or distress. Strange to
see, too, how Steele and Diane responded to the stimulus of my idea, to
the promise of what lay beyond the wild and barren hills!
He told me that day about the headlong flight of every lawless character
out of Linrock, the very hour that Snecker and Wright and Sampson were
known to have fallen. Steele expressed deep feeling, almost
mortification, that the credit of that final coup had gone to him,
instead of me. His denial and explanation had been only a few soundless
words in the face of a grateful and clamorous populace that tried to
reward him, to make him mayor of Linrock.
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