“Not any man,” interrupted Nance, “my Pappy didn’t.”
“No?” said Arnold cruelly. “Is he here?”
Quick tears misted the girl’s eyes, but the slowly throbbing anger burned them out.
“Yes,” she said promptly, “and always will be—at the foot of our mountain—and in Bud and me. He has not yet been conquered.”
Arnold dropped his dead cigarette into a tall brass receptacle, rose and stepped into the other room. He picked something from the desk there and came back.
“We come to cases,” he said sharply. “I have here a properly made out deed, conveying to Miss Cathrew for the consideration of one dollar, the quarter-section of land herein described, lying along Nameless River, owned by the widow of John Allison, deceased, who took up said land under the homestead act. This paper needs only the name of John Allison’s widow and two witnesses to make it a legal transfer of property. I am a notary. We can supply the witnesses—the highly important and necessary signature of John Allison’s widow you will obligingly furnish—at a price.”
Nance’s eyes were studying his face all the while he was speaking. They were black and narrow, without a visible trace of their serene blue. Now the lower lid came up across the excited iris like the blade of a guillotine.
“Let me understand you clearly,” she said, “you are asking me to forge my Mammy’s name to a deed to give away her home land—the land her husband patented and left her as her all? Is this what you are asking me?”
“Exactly,” said Arnold, “but don’t forget the condition—at a price, I said, you know—at—a price.”
Nance swept off her hat and struck it down against her knee. A laugh broke stiffly on her tallow-white face.