She went to the front door with him and instructed him to keep out of line of the old man’s window, not to bring the milk to the house but to leave it on the floor of the larger barn, and to remain in the barn until he saw her again.
“And I’ll bring you every rifle-cartridge I can find,” she concluded.
He thanked her and started off to attend to the cows; but before he had gone a dozen paces he turned and came back to where she still stood on the threshold.
“I had forgotten the milk-pails,” he explained.
After milking and turning the cows out, he fed the pigs. He could not feed the calves, for he had not brought their breakfast of hay-tea and skimmed milk from the house. He retired to the barn then and gave his mind to very serious and painful thought.
“What’s the use?” he exclaimed, at last. “Thinking won’t undo what’s already done. The past is out of my hands—and I hope to heaven it is buried! I can only help myself in the future.”
The girl found him a few minutes later. She carried a small basket containing sixty cartridges.
“These are all I could find,” she said. “I took them from the box in his room, and from behind the clock, and from the rifle and even from his pockets. He is feeling much stronger already.”
She took up the pails of milk and was about to go when Akerley begged her to wait a minute. He produced a knife of parts from a pocket and with one of its numerous attachments pried the bullet out of a cartridge and extracted the explosive charge. Then he refixed the bullet in the empty shell and handed it to the girl.
“Please put that in his rifle,” he said. “Nothing will go off but the cap when he pulls the trigger on that. I’ll have the rest of them fool-proof in a couple of hours.”
She complimented him on his cleverness, told him not to budge from the barn until her return, and went away with the milk and the harmless cartridge. He was very busy throughout the next two hours. He counted the seconds of the third hour, paced the dusty floor and looked out every minute.
She came at last, with his dinner in a basket covered with a linen napkin. Everything looked as right as could be to him then—and he did not know why. He thought it was because he felt hungry. His pleasure lit his eyes upon beholding her and sounded in his voice when he welcomed her; and these things did not escape her notice and at once pleased and puzzled her.