"
"Why didn't Ricketts tell it right out at once?" asked Sinnet.
"Greevy was his own cousin--it was in the family, an' he kept thinkin' of
Greevy's gal, Em'ly. Her--what'll it matter to her! She'll get married,
an she'll forgit. I know her, a gal that's got no deep feelin' like
Clint had for me. But because of her Ricketts didn't speak for a year.
Then he couldn't stand it any longer, an' he told me--seein' how I
suffered, an' everybody hidin' their suspicions from me, an' me up here
out o' the way, an' no account. That was the feelin' among 'em--what was
the good of making things worse! They wasn't thinkin' of the boy or of
Jim Buckmaster, his father. They was thinkin' of Greevy's gal--to save
her trouble."
Sinnet's face was turned towards Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed,
as it were, on a still more distant object--a dark, brooding, inscrutable
look.
"Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?" The voice was very quiet, but
it had a suggestive note.
"That's all Clint told Bill before he died. That was enough."
There was a moment's pause, and then, puffing out long clouds of smoke,
and in a tone of curious detachment, as though he were telling of
something that he saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a
battle from a far vantage-point might report to a blind man standing
near, Sinnet said:
"P'r'aps Ricketts didn't know the whole story; p'r'aps Clint didn't know
it all to tell him; p'r'aps Clint didn't remember it all.
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