Then
maybe we'll have time to go into the things I don't know."
It was of no use to urge her. I bowed my assent to her terms.
"I'll name no names," she said. "My throat can be cut as quick as
yours, and maybe a damned sight quicker."
Mother Borton had among her failings a weakness for profanity. I have
omitted most of her references to sacred and other subjects of the kind
in transcribing her remarks.
"The ones that has the boy means all right. They're rich. The ones as
is looking for the boy is all wrong. They'll be rich if they gits him."
"How?"
"Why, I don't know," said Mother Borton. "I'm tellin' you what Henry
Wilton told me."
This was maddening. I began to suspect that she knew nothing after all.
"Do you know where he is?" I asked, taking the questioning into my own
hands.
"No,"--sullenly.
"Who is protecting him?"
"I don't know."
"Who is trying to get him?"
"It's that snake-eyed Tom Terrill that's leading the hunt, along with
Darby Meeker; but they ain't doing it for themselves."
"Is Doddridge Knapp behind them?"
The old woman looked at me suddenly in wild-eyed alarm.
"S-s-h!" she whispered. "Don't name no names."
"But I saw--"
She put her hand over my mouth.
"He's in it somewhere, or the devil is, but I don't know where. He's an
awful man. He's everywhere at once. He's--oh Lord! What was that?"
I had become infected with her nervousness, and at a cracking or
creaking sound turned around with half an expectation of seeing
Doddridge Knapp himself coming in the door.
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