"'Cept your wife; she was down here this afternoon," said Patterson
meditatively.
Mr. Tucker paused with the pie in his hand. "Ah, yes!" He essayed a
reckless laugh, but that evident simulation failed before Patterson's
melancholy. With an assumption of falling in with his friend's manner,
rather than from any personal anxiety, he continued, "Well?"
"That man Poindexter was down here with her. Put her in the hacienda to
hold possession afore the news came out."
"Impossible!" said Tucker, rising hastily. "It don't belong--that is--"
he hesitated.
"Yer thinking the creditors 'll get it, mebbe," returned Patterson,
gazing at the floor. "Not as long as she's in it; no sir! Whether
it's really hers, or she's only keeping house for Poindexter, she's a
fixture, you bet. They're a team when they pull together, they are!"
The smile slowly faded from Tucker's face, that now looked quite rigid
in the moonlight. He put down his glass and walked to the window as
Patterson gloomily continued, "But that's nothing to you. You've got
ahead of 'em both, and had your revenge by going off with the
gal. That's what I said all along. When folks--especially women
folks--wondered how you could leave a woman like your wife, and go off
with a scallawag like that gal, I allers said they'd find out there was
a reason. And when your wife came flaunting down here with Poindexter
before she'd quite got quit of you, I reckon they began to see the whole
little game. No sir! I knew it wasn't on account of the gal! Why, when
you came here to-night and told me quite nat'ral-like and easy how
she went off in the ship, and then calmly ate your pie and drank your
whiskey after it, I knew you didn't care for her. There's my hand,
Spence; you're a trump, even if you are a little looney, eh? Why, what's
up?"
Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson's words seemed like a
revelation that shocked him as profoundly as it might have shocked a
nobler nature. The simple vanity and selfishness that made him unable to
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