here?"
"Yes, here."
"No, no, Jack!" His arms were round her now. "It could not be here.
Could you take me away?"
A struggle passed for a moment over McMurdo's face; but it ended by
setting like granite. "No, here," he said. "I'll hold you against the
world, Ettie, right here where we are!"
"Why should we not leave together?"
"No, Ettie, I can't leave here."
"But why?"
"I'd never hold my head up again if I felt that I had been driven out.
Besides, what is there to be afraid of? Are we not free folks in a free
country? If you love me, and I you, who will dare to come between?"
"You don't know, Jack. You've been here too short a time. You don't know
this Baldwin. You don't know McGinty and his Scowrers."
"No, I don't know them, and I don't fear them, and I don't believe
in them!" said McMurdo. "I've lived among rough men, my darling, and
instead of fearing them it has always ended that they have feared
me--always, Ettie. It's mad on the face of it! If these men, as your
father says, have done crime after crime in the valley, and if everyone
knows them by name, how comes it that none are brought to justice? You
answer me that, Ettie!"
"Because no witness dares to appear against them. He would not live a
month if he did. Also because they have always their own men to swear
that the accused one was far from the scene of the crime. But surely,
Jack, you must have read all this. I had understood that every paper in
the United States was writing about it."
"Well, I have read something, it is true; but I had thought it was a
story. Maybe these men have some reason in what they do. Maybe they are
wronged and have no other way to help themselves."
"Oh, Jack, don't let me hear you speak so! That is how he speaks--the
other one!"
"Baldwin--he speaks like that, does he?"
"And that is why I loathe him so. Oh, Jack, now I can tell you the
truth. I loathe him with all my heart; but I fear him also. I fear him
for myself; but above all I fear him for father. I know that some great
sorrow would come upon us if I dared to say what I really felt. That is
why I have put him off with half-promises. It was in real truth our only
hope. But if you would fly with me, Jack, we could take father with us
and live forever far from the power of these wicked men."
Again there was the struggle upon McMurdo's face, and again it set like
granite. "No harm shall come to you, Ettie--nor to your father either.
As to wicked
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