"
"Well, if that's right--and the papers ain't got things twisted, like
when they said The Spider was my father--why, if it _was_ Steve Gary--I
kin go back to the Concho and kind o' start over ag'in."
"I don't understand."
"'Course you don't! You see, me and Gary mixed onct--and--"
Doris' gray eyes grew big as Pete spoke rapidly of his early life, of
the horse-trader, of Annersley and Bailey and Montoya, and young Andy
White--characters who passed swiftly before her vision as she followed
Pete's fortunes up to the moment when he was brought into the hospital.
And presently she understood that he was trying to tell her that if the
newspaper report was authentic he was a free man. His eagerness to
vindicate himself was only too apparent.
Suddenly he ceased talking. The animation died from his dark eyes.
"Mebby it wa'n't the same Steve Gary," he said.
"If it had been, you mean that you could go back to your friends--and
there would be no trouble--?"
Pete nodded. "But I don't know."
"Is there any way of finding out--before you leave here?" she asked.
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