All this completed Billy's demoralization. His teeth chattered louder, and for the life of him he could not control an audible sound, half sob, half sigh. But Jude was evidently as much overpowered as Billy, for the boy suddenly heard him emit an oath, and then a volley of questions designed to clear the air after Jared's storm of eloquence.
"She'll come, all right." Jared had his answers ready. "It's an all-fired queer state of things down there to St. Angé. You and me ain't never struck Gaston's kind before. Joyce'll go when he calls, and don't you forget it--all I've got to do is to make the lumberman's letter real convincing.
"Sure! I'm the lumberman, all right. Camp up north? Nothing. I'll land her here where her rightful and loving husband will be waiting for her till further developments. How did I find out the lay of the land? Gosh! that was a tight squeeze. I found out he was over to Hillcrest, Gaston you know; and I run up, after dark to his shack, planning to get a haul from Joyce. I got into the back kitchen while she was outside, and before I could get away--in walks Gaston. What I saw and heard that evening, Jude, ain't necessary here, but it blazed our trail, boy, and I cut later--taking more than I planned for." Birkdale breathed hard. "You leave Gaston to me, curse 'im!
"Make trouble for us? How in thunder is a man to make trouble for a husband who is taking his own wife to his dishonoured bosom? Lord! Jude, you've got about as much backbone as an angle worm.
"What?" Some muttered words followed that Billy could not catch. Then--
"Trust me! Does any one know to this day, you blamed fool, who shot that government detective that was snooping into that clearing you and me made--five years back? Gaston'll pay or you'll take one of them never-failing shots of yours, and----"
It had been a hard day for Billy, and he was only fourteen.
The low, smoke-filled loft seemed to draw close about him, and it smothered the life out of him. He thought he screamed, but instead, an unseen power laid a kindly hand upon his trembling mouth, and a pause came in his troubled life. It was not sleep, nor was it faintness that struck like death the frightened boy--but an oblivion, from which he issued clear-headed and strengthened.