"What I've got to say to ye, Mrs. Wade,--as I reckon you be,--is
strictly private and confidential! Why, ye'll see afore I get through.
But I thought I might just as well caution ye agin our being disturbed."
Overcoming a slight instinct of repulsion, Mrs. Wade returned, "You can
speak to me here; no one will interrupt you--unless I call them," she
added with a little feminine caution.
"And I reckon ye won't do that," he said with a grim smile. "You are the
widow o' Pulaski Wade, late o' Heavy Tree Hill, I reckon?"
"I am," said Mrs. Wade.
"And your husband's buried up thar in the graveyard, with a monument
over him setting forth his virtues ez a Christian and a square man and a
high-minded citizen? And that he was foully murdered by highwaymen?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Wade, "that is the inscription."
"Well, ma'am, a bigger pack o' lies never was cut on stone!"
Mrs. Wade rose, half in indignation, half in terror.
"Keep your sittin'," said the stranger, with a warning wave of his
hand. "Wait till I'm through, and then you call in the hull State o'
Californy, ef ye want."
The stranger's manner was so doggedly confident that Mrs. Wade sank
back tremblingly in her chair. The man put his slouch hat on his knee,
twirled it round once or twice, and then said with the same stubborn
deliberation:--
"The highwayman in that business was your husband--Pulaski Wade--and his
gang, and he was killed by one o' the men he was robbin'. Ye see,
ma'am, it used to be your husband's little game to rope in three or four
strangers in a poker deal at Spanish Jim's saloon--I see you've heard o'
the place," he interpolated as Mrs. Wade drew back suddenly--"and when
he couldn't clean 'em out in that way, or they showed a little more
money than they played, he'd lay for 'em with his gang in a lone part of
the trail, and go through them like any road agent. That's what he did
that night--and that's how he got killed."
"How do you know this?" said Mrs. Wade, with quivering lips.
"I was one o' the men he went through before he was killed. And I'd hev
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