“My land!” pursued Mrs. Crump, meditatively. “When I think of the knock-kneed, blear-eyed critter I found layin’ up above the Bajada grade, I can’t hardly recognize ye, Thady! Ye look’s if ye’d got used to leaning on yourself. Want to come back to Number Sixteen with me?”
Shea frowned in perplexity. His eyes were serious. He had set forth all that had happened to him, all that he had done; Mrs. Crump had given him no blame, but in her eyes had shone pride and praise.
“I—I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “I’m looking for a purpose in life. I’m trying to find something definite. It’s so long since I’ve had anything definite! These twenty years, and more, there has seemed to be a knot gripped about my soul, somewhere—stifling me. I don’t seem to——”
“No need for all that,” said Mrs. Crump, impatiently. “You’re rich now.”
Shea’s eyes widened. “You mean—the mine?”
“No, I don’t. That mine is a humdinger, or will be once it gets started to paying. I got Lewis an’ Gilbert workin’ there now, they bein’ out o’ jail and shut o’ that old charge. No, Thady; I mean the ten thousand we screwed out o’ that skunk Mackintavers.”
Shea looked blank. “Ten thousand? I don’t understand.”
Mrs. Crump sighed in resignation, and set herself to explain.
“It was a right smart trick to indorse that check Dorales had made ready for ye—’bout the smartest thing I ever knowed ye to do, Thady. I takes that check and lights out and cashes it ’fore old Mackintavers heard what had happened to Dorales. The money’s in your name, down to the First National at Silver City; I ain’t touched it.”
She fumbled in her bosom and produced a folded check book.
“Here’s the check book they give me, all proper. Sign your checks the same way ye indorsed that one, savvy? I turned in the note ye left me at the shack, with your signature on it, to the bank.”
She broke off. She came to a faltering but decided halt.
For, as she had spoken, a queer look had stolen across the beard-blurred features of Thady Shea, and had settled there. It was such a look as she had never previously seen upon his face. It was a look of incredulous wonder, of grief, of dismay.
The personal equation in that look silenced and startled Mrs. Crump. It conveyed to her that she must have said some terrible thing, something which had shocked Thady Shea beyond words, something which had struck and hurt him like a blow. She rapidly thought back—no, she had not even sworn!