Chapter 12

A LESSON IN FORGIVENESS

"Well, old-timer, how you coming? You sure do sleep sound--this is the third time I've come to tell you breakfast is ready and then some. You'll get the bottom of the coffeepot, for fair, if you don't hustle." Kent left the door of the ice house wide open behind him, so that the warmth of mid-morning swept in to do battle with the chill and damp of wet sawdust and buried ice.

Manley rolled over so that he faced his visitor, and his reply was abusive in the extreme. Kent waited, with an air of impersonal interest, until he was done and had turned his face away as though the subject was quite exhausted.

"Well, now you've got that load off your mind, come on over and get a cup of coffee. But while you're thinking about whether you want anything but my heart's blood, I'm going to speak right up and tell you a few things that commonly ain't none of my business.

"Do you know your wife came within an ace of burning to death yesterday?" Manley sat up with a jerk and glared at him. "Do you know you're burned out, slick and clean--all except the shack? Hay, stables, corral, wagons, chickens--" Kent spread his hands in a gesture including all minor details. "I rode over there when I saw the fire coming, and it's lucky I did, old-timer. I back-fired and saved the house--and your wife--from going up in smoke. But everything else went. Let that sink into your system, will you? And just see if you can draw a picture of what woulda happened if nobody had showed up--if that fire had hit the coulee with nobody there but your wife. Why, I run onto her half-way up the bluff, packing a wet sack, to fight it at the fire guards I Now, Man, it ain't any credit to, you that the worst didn't happen. I'd sure like to tell you what I think of a fellow that will leave a woman out there, twenty miles from town and ten from the nearest neighbor--and them not at home--to take a chance on a thing like that; but I can't. I never learned words enough.

"There's another thing. Old lady Hawley took more interest in her than you did; she drove out there to see how about it, as soon as the fire had burned on past and left the trail safe. And it didn't look good to her--that little woman stuck out there all by herself. She made her pack up some clothes, and brought her to town with her. She didn't want to come; she had an idea that she ought to stay with it till you showed up. But the only original Hawley is sure all right! She talked your wife plumb outa the house and into the rig, and brought her to town. She's over to the hotel now."

"Val at the hotel? How long has she been there?" Manley began smoothing his hair and his crumpled clothes with his hands, "Good heavens! You told her I'd gone on out, and had missed her on the trail, didn't you, Kent? She doesn't know I'm in town, does she? You always were a good fellow--I haven't