Instead, he ventured, in his serious
tones, as the silence grew oppressive: "You're mighty handy 'bout this sort
o' thing. I reckon I'll have a tough time here alone till that hand heals."
"Oh, I'll stay with you a while," Kerry put in, hastily. "I ain't a-goin'
on, a-leavin' a man in sech a fix, when I ain't got nothin' in particular
to do an' nowheres in particular to go," he concluded, rather lamely.
His host's eyes dwelt on him. "Well, now, that'd be mighty kind in you,
stranger," he began, gently; and added, with the mountaineer's deathless
hospitality, "You're shorely welcome."
In Kerry's pocket a pair of steel handcuffs clicked against each other. Any
moment of the time that he was dressing the outlaw's hand, identifying at
short range a dozen marks enumerated in the description furnished him, he
could have snapped them upon those great wrists and made his host his
prisoner. Yet, an hour later, when the big man had told him of a string of
fish tied down in the branch, of a little cellarlike contrivance by the
spring which contained honeycomb and some cold corn-pone, the two men sat
at supper like brothers.
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